SOME FAMOUS CENTENARIANS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 22, 19 March 1918, Page 7

SOME FAMOUS CENTENARIANS.

LONGEVITY AS A FINE ART. Those who think that longevity presupposes a life of ease, tranquility and comparative abstention from the hurly-burly of the world will be quickly undeceived by making acquaintance with the career of that turbulent and eccentric Irish prelate, John Leslie, Bishop of Raphoe (15711671). By profession he was an apostle of peace ; in practice he was a man of war. His palace became a fortress ; his diocese an armed camp. Leslie would not have resented the judgment of posterity which speaks of him as the “fighting bishop.” He dearly loved to be in the thick of the fray. To command a regiment, to storm a fortress, or to carry munitions of war to a beleaguered town was more to his taste, than embracing the “fat slumbers of the church,” and ministering to the faithful from the comfortable shelter of a cathedral pulpit. Leslie was a born soldier who somehow scrambled on to the episcopal bench. THE BISHOP AS CENTENARIAN.

Though a maker of Irish history, Leslie was a Scot by birth, being descended from the famous Aberdeenshire family which in bygone centuries was rich in soldiers, scholars, and churchmen. In his young days he was a traveller of renown and an accomplished linguist. For twenty years he roamed the Continent, where he had many adventures, where, too, he was initiated into the pomp and circumstance of war. In the intervals o| knight-errantry he picked up scraps of learning. Late in life he blossomed into a.bishop, and became possessed of broad acres among the streams, lakelets, and undulating hills of fair Monaghan, where he founded a branch (which still flourishes) of the ancient family of Leslie. Flattered by princes abroad, Leslie was honoured by monarchs at home. James I. made him a Privy Councillor in Scotland, Charles I. gave him the same rank in Ireland, and Charles 11. renewed the latter office, as well as showed, him other marks of royal favour. And the bishop was worthy of it all. His marvellous resource, his organising ability and his energy and enthusiasm made him one of the most valuable assets of the Stuart cause in the north of Ireland. Boldly did he stand in the way of the usurper, stubbornly did he fight against overwhelming odds. Leslie showed remarkable physical alertness almost to the end of his tumultuous career. When almost a nonagenarian, the bishop, still the Cavalier that he was in days of yore, node from Chester to London in twenty-four hours that he might do homage to Charles 11. He wedded at seventy, the bride being eighteen. The marriage was a happy one, and there were no fewer than ten children, several of whom became famous. Lesilie’s old age glided on. and was in marked contrast to the storm and stress of his earlier years.

SIR RICHARD BULSTRODE (1610-1711).

One of the minor figures of Puritan and Revolution times, Sir Richard Bulstrode was a Royalist soldier who attracted the favourable notice of Charles I. He was also a plenipotentiary who rose to honour at foreign Courts. For long years, however, his horizon was bounded by “armies, sieges of towns, courts of princes.” And withal he was a patron of learning, and beheld his own Latinity with pride. When James 11. retired to St. Sermains, Bulstrode, then nearing his eightieth year, accompanied him.

Bulstrode interests most because he was a centenarian who happened to be a moralist. At ninety-sis he penned a volume of essays, the most interesting of which is that on old age. . Bulstrode is not blind to the pathos of the situation. “We old men cannot be something concerned to think that we grow less and less every day,” and that the world v/hicfv seemed “a Juno in the pursuit, is but a cloud in our embraces.” But old age, Bulstrode would have us know, is not without its pleasures. It should be welcomed, because it weans us gently from base affections, so that at the last wv drop “with ease and willingness like ripe fruit from the tree.”

Bulstrode died an exile at St. Germains. He had lived some months beyond a hundred years. Death is said to have been immediately due, not to sheer old age, but to an indigestion, which in all probability would not have ended fatally had the centenarian’s own physician been at hand. Considering that Bulstrode believed that a man only begins to be himself when he has retired, his epitaph

might well have been that of another famous soldidr—“Here lies Sir Die-

hard Bulstrode, knight, of a very great age, who yet lived but twenty years, relating only to the time of his retirement.”

MARTIN JOSEPH ROUTH (1755-1854).

Dr. Routh, one of the most famous Presidents of Magdalen College, Oxford, died in his hundredth year. Ho may, therefore, be reasonably included in our group of centenarians. Routh linked the age of Anne with that of Victoria. This modern Methusalah, who had talked with a contemporary of Addison and had seen Dr. Johnson, w in his brown wig, mounting the stairs of University College, lived long enough to sing the praises of ‘ ‘that clever young gentleman of Oriel, Mr. Newman ; ” to have his Toryism outraged by Gladstone’s secession to Liberalism ; and to hear the “cannon’s opening roar” in the Crimean War.

Routh had a “morbid craving” for longevity, and, according to Newman, too “excessive care of himself.” He retained his physical and mental powers almost to the very end. Age did not appreciably affect his wonderful memory or blunt the keen edge of his learning. At ninety-four he was capable of walking six miles on a hilly road and under a burning sun, and at ninety-five he could still take an active part in an academic function. A few months before he attained his hundredth year he published a recondite pamphlet of twenty-five pages. On the day before his death he confided that no physician had ever previously seen him in bed. Routh passed the greater part of his life in his library—one of the largest and most valuable private collections in the country. He was a vigilant book buyer, and at ninety-seven was still buying “scarce and inestimable books.”

The romance of the President’s life occurred at the very unromantic age of sixty-five, when he married a bride of thirty. In his ninetieth year ,he wrote a farewell epistle to a murderer awaiting execution, the document being read to the condemned man in his cell. Following in the footsteps of Pope, Gay, and Prior, he penned his own epitaph, but left his will unsigned. Beyond an old-world courtesy and a partiality for attire bordering on the antique, there was little to distinguish Routh from his associates of later years. He was a cheerful, kindly, liberal-minded man, at home among wits and scholars, keenly interesed in literature and politics, relishing good talk, enjoying his joke, and fond of his dog and canary. There dwelt within him, too, much of the wisdom of this world. Do we not scent it in the injunction addressed bo a freshman—“ Attach yoursejf to some great man, sir. Many have risen to eminence in that way ” ? To another young student who asked him for a word of counsel, he replied, “Always verify your references, sir.” Routh rests from his labours in the shadow of that tall, slender, age-worn tower that breathes the very spirit and beauty of Oxford —the tower of Magdalen.

LADY PLBASANCB SMITH (1773-1877).

Lady Pleasance Smith, who died within three months of reaching the great age of a hundred and four, was the wife of Sir James Edward Smith, the famous botanist and the founder of the Linnean Society. Born some two years before the outbreak of the American War, she yet lived to read an account of the centennial celebrations in connection with American Independence. Warren Hastings was placed on trial when she was a girl. The fall of the Bastille occurred in her sixteenth year ; and there is preserved a letter which she wrote in the first fervour of the French Revolution. Married when Napoleon was rising into fame, Lady Smith yet survived the Second Empire by nearly seven years. And this lady who was living in the time of Lord Chatham and might well have ‘remembered the later oratorical triumphs of Burke, was still interested in politics when Beaconsfield and Gladstone was conspicuous Parliamentary figures. f A woman of uncommon beauty with an Oriental cast of features, Adam Sedgwick, the geologist, thus wrote of Lady Smith on the occasion of a visit to her home in Lowestoft in 1865—“ She is the most wonderful woman of her years that I ever beheld. She is now 92 ; yet her eyes are bright as diamonds ; her face is smooth ; there is a natural colour on her cheek ; her voice is full; her gestures active and firm ; her posture as upright as that of a young woman.” Four years later Sedgwick again saw Lady Smith. He wrote —“Lady Smith has bright manners, bright eyes, and clear sight ; a face still handsome, and with healthy colour on her smooth, well-rounded cheeks. She Lears well, and her voice has a cheerful ring in it. . . . Lady Smith is one of a million . . . for she is now wearing her way through her 97th year. I am- old, and suffering from the infirmities of old age ; but my friend Lady Smith, to whom I gave a true-love kiss, is twelve years older than myself,” When Lady Smith became a centenarian Queen Victoria sent her a copy of her book, “Our Life in the Highlands,” bearing the autograph inscription “To Lady Smith, on her 100th birthday, from her friend Victoria R., May 11th, 1873.” At this time she was wonderfully well preserved. Her countenance betrayed nothing of the pallor associated with extreme old age. Her eyes still sparkled, and nearly all her teeth were intact. Her hearing was excellent, and though her sight was beginning to fail, she still wrote a clear and beautiful caligraphy such as one seldom sees in this typewriting age. Her memory, too, was singularly retentive. Talking a few days before her daath of .the custom of n using- -the

curfew, ane repeated wixnout nesitation the greater part of Gray’s “Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard.” In her hundredth and third year Lady Smitn still entertained her friends, and took carriage drives almost daily. SIR MOSES MONTBFIORB (1784-1885).

Of all British centenarians Sir Moses Montefiore is easily the first, the greatest, the noblest. ■ One of the most influential of modern Jews, the grand object of his life' was the emancipation of the Hebrew race the world over. For more than sixty years it engaged his unremitting attention ; upon it he spent a princely fortune.

There is a world of psychological meaning in Monteflore’s individuality. He did violence to the popular conception of the Jew. He was a philanthropist, a patriot, an altruist in the broadest and best sense. The spirit of greed and revenge was exchanged for that of brotherhood —the lust of gold for a munificence almost unexampled. And Montefiore, be it remembered, did not sit lightly by the Rabbinical law. He was the strictest and most orthodox of Jews, learned in the Talmud, and punctilious in his observance of rites and ceremonies. Montefiore had a tough constitution and accomplished prodigious physical feats when beyond the allotted span. His seventh and final pilgrimage to the Holy Land was undertaken in his ninetieth year. Till the eve of his hundredth year he maintained wonderfully good health. With the exception of a slight stoop, his stalwart frame (he was 6 feet 3 inches in height) showed little trace of the calamities of abnormal age. He heard perfectly almost to the end, and his eyesight was only slightly defective.

When Monteflore completed his nine-ty-ninth year there were rejoicings at his beautiful marine residence at Ramsgate. On the morning of the eventful day a choir sang hymns on the lawn of Bast Cliffe Lodge. As the patriarch sat listening at an open window, a congratulatory telegram arrived from Queen Victoria, whereupon he requested the choir to sing the National Anthem. MonteSore’s physical state after he had become a centenarian was one of everincreasing weakness. Most of his time was spent reclining on a sofa or in bed. But he talked as cheerily as ever, and took pleasure in recalling incidents of his travel. * MANUEL GARCIA (1805-1906), Manual Garcia, the greatest teacher of singing the world has ever known, the inventor of the laryngoscope, and a marvellous centenarian, was born at Zafri, in Catalonia, and died in London, which was his home for nearly half a century. Garcia became a centenarian on St. Patrick’s Day, 1905. Strange to relate, it was one of the busiest days of his life. Instead of sitting composedly by his .own fireside, he fulfilled a round of public engagements. In the morning he visited Buckingham Palace, where King Edward invested him with the insignia of Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.. Subsequently he drove to a reception at' the rooms of the Royal Medical and Chirugical Society. Here he listed to congratulatory addresses, after whfch he rose to return thanks. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Garcia’s voice quivered, and after uttering a few halting sentences, the rest of his manuscript was read for him. On reaching his home at Cricklewood, Garcia felt a little exhausted, and was glad to rest during the afternoon. But in the evening he attended a banquet in his honour at the Hotel Cecil. When he entered he was greeted enthusiastically by a distinguished company of musicians and scientists. Surely never before had so extraordinary a spectacle been witnessed. There, in the place of honour, was a man who was a hundred years old ! That a centenarian should have attended a public banquet is in itself amazing; that he should have attempted to deliver a speech seems incredible. But what had happened earlier in the day happened again. After reading a few sentences of his speech in an almost inaudible voice, Garcia handed his speech to the chairs man, who read the remainder. As a speech by a centenarian may well be considered a rarity, a passage is here produced “There is an old story, some of you may remember, which, when I read it, changed the aspect of things for me by its very name, for that was a stroke of genius. ‘Put yourself in his place.’ What a different world it would be if we all did that ! Well, you try now. Try hard.' Think yourselves each one hundred years old to-day. Not the ladies ! I will not ask them. Though they may come to that they will never look it, and they will never know it, and no one will ever believe it. But you men can try. Fancy you each lived one hundred years, and woke to-day to find yourself surrounded by kindly clamorous voices, ‘troops of friends.’ What would you say ? I think you would say nought. ... I shall

say nought, nought, nought to all of you, except this, God bless you every one !’•’

A few days later Garcia was entertained to dinner by a company of laryngologists, at which he spoke in French, smoked a cigarette, drank some spirit, and wrote his name on some forty menu cards. In his hundredth and first year he revised the proof sheets of a book, and he celebrated the beginning of his hundredth and second year characterictically enough, by playing his guitar and singing a Spanish air. Some weeks later he attended a performance at one of the London theatres. On July 1, 1906, Garcia passed away in his sleep at the age of one hunarad and one -sears and four months.