Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

Evolution of his Physiognomy

Evolution of his Physiognomy.

Five portraits of Grey are speaking and significant. The one from a painting by Richmond, taken in the fifties and prefixed to the first volume of the English edition of Mr. Rees's biography, is assuredly that of a good and kind, yet firm and strong, man, who has a striking resemblance to the great preacher, Robertson of Brighton. No trace is there of the later savagery.

A photograph taken at Capetown in 1861 reveals a notable change. The beautiful symmetry of the features in Richmond's perhaps flattered portrait has disappeared, and the mouth, possibly by the fault of the engraver, is distorted into an expression of obstinacy and perversity. "It is the mouth of a thoroughly unscrupulous man," said a good judge who saw it. Self-assertion, carried to an extreme has brought him to this! In later years his mouth was concealed by his bristly moustache. Had he inherited his mother's sensitive and quivering, yet firm, lips, how very different a man he might have been, and how different a career he might have had!

A third portrait prefixed to the second volume of Mr. Rees's work and possibly belonging to the seventies, shows a complete revolution. The ardour visible but latent in the earlier physiognomy has kindled in the eyes and whole gaze into an inward flame. The early Victorian whiskers have been replaced by a moustache, already cropped close, but not yet bristly or quite savage. In a fourth, belonging to the eighties, the hirsute moustache, as of the Wild Boar of the Ardennes in Quentin Durward, and the hardened face, reveal patent savagery and a deep moral descent. A savage vindictiveness, a fanaticism of rebellion, a defiant self-assertion are its notes.

A still more tragic change is disclosed by a fifth portrait which hangs in the Public Library at Auckland. The self-assertion and the savagery have almost disappeared, quenched in a strange new expression—that of irremediable moral defeat. It must have been taken in the late eighties or early nineties, when he at last realised that, in public life at all events, lie was a beaten man. This fifth portrait pathetically embodies the final summing up of a long and active life. We are reminded of the words of Hildebrand: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.'' Some such sentiment would translate the physiognomy of the old Governor as, in his last years in New Zealand, he walked, almost deserted, the streets of the city where he had once trodden as an almost absolute ruler.