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Autobiography of John St. Loe Strachey
THE ADVENTURE OF LIVING
A Subjective Autobiography (1860-1922)
By John St. Loe Strachey Editor of _The Spectator_
_"We carry with us the wonders we seek without
us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we
are that bold and adventurous piece of Nature, which
he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what
others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume."_
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
TO MY WIFE
You who know something of the irony of life in general, and still more
of it in the present particular, will not be surprised that, having made
two strict rules for my guidance in the writing of this book, I break
them both in the first page! Indeed, I can hear you say, though without
any touch of the satirical, that it was only natural that I should do
so.
The first of my two rules, heartily approved by you, let me add, is that
I should not mention you in my autobiography.--We both deem it foolish
as well as unseemly to violate in print the freemasonry of marriage.--
The second, not unlike the first, is not to write about living people.
And here am I hard at it in both cases!
Yet, after all, I have kept to my resolve in the spirit, if not in the
letter:--and this though it has cost me some very good "copy,"--copy,
too, which would have afforded me the pleasantest of memories. There are
things seen by us together which I much regret to leave unchronicled,
but these must wait for another occasion. Many of them are quite
suitable to be recorded in one's lifetime. For example, I should dearly
like to set forth our ride from Jerusalem to Damascus, together with
some circumstances, as an old-fashioned traveller might have said,
concerning the Garden of the Jews at Jahoni, and the strange and
beautiful creature we found therein.
I count myself happy indeed to have seen half the delightful and notable
things I have seen during my life, in your company. Do you remember the
turbulent magnificence of our winter passage of the Splügen, not in a
snowstorm, but in something much more thrilling--a fierce windstorm in a
great frost? The whirling, stinging, white dust darkened the air and
coated our sledges, our horses, and our faces. We shall neither of us
ever forget how just below the Hospice your sledge was actually blown
over by the mere fury of the blizzard; how we tramped through the
drifts, and how all ended in "the welcome of an inn" on the summit; the
hot soup and the _Côtelettes de Veau_. It was together, too, that
we watched the sunrise from the Citadel at Cairo and saw the Pyramids
tipped with rose and saffron. Ours, too, was the desert mirage that, in
spite of reason and experience, almost betrayed us in our ride to the
Fayum. You shared with me what was certainly an adventure of the spirit,
though not of the body, when for the first time we saw the fateful and
well-loved shores of America. The lights danced like fireflies in the
great towers of New York, while behind them glowed in sombre splendour
the fiery Bastions of a November sunset.
But, of course, none of all this affords the reason why I dedicate my
book to you. That reason will perhaps be fully understood only by me and
by our children. It can also be found in certain wise and cunning little
hearts, inscrutable as those of kings, in a London nursery. Susan,
Charlotte, and Christopher could tell if they would.
If that sounds inconsequent, or, at any rate, incomprehensible, may I
not plead that so do the ineffable Mysteries of Life and Death.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
It is with great pleasure that I accept Major Putnam's suggestion that I
should write a special preface to the American edition of my
autobiography. Major Putnam, I, and the _Spectator_, are a
triumvirate of old friends, and I should not be likely to refuse a
request made by him, even if its fulfilment was a much less agreeable
task than that of addressing an American audience.
I was born with a mind which might well be described as _Anima
naturaliter Americana_. I have always loved America and the
Americans, and, though I cannot expect them to feel for me as I feel for
them, I cherish the belief that, at any rate, they do not dislike me
instinctively. That many of them regard me as somewhat wild and
injudicious in my praise of their country I am well aware. They hold
that I often praise America not only too much, but that I praise her for
the wrong things,--praise, indeed, where I ought to censure, and so
"spoil" their countrymen. Well, if that is a true bill, all I can say is
that it is too late to expect me to mend my ways.
During my boyhood people here understood America much less than they do
now. Though I should be exaggerating if I said that there was anything
approaching dislike of America or Americans, there were certain
intellectual people in England who were apt to parade a kind of
conscious and supercilious patronage of the wilder products of American
life and literature. I heard exaggerated stories about Americans, and
especially about the Americans of the Far West,--heard them, that is,
represented as semi-barbarians, coarse, rash, and boastful, with bad
manners and no feeling for the reticences of life. Such legends
exasperated me beyond words. I felt as did the author of _Ionica_
on re-reading the play of Ajax.
The world may like, for all I care,
The gentler voice, the cooler head,
That bows a rival to despair,
And cheaply compliments the dead.
That smiles at all that's coarse and rash,
Yet wins the trophies of the fight,
Unscathed in honour's wreck and crash,
Heartless, but always in the right.
* * * * *
There were my superior persons drawn to the life!
When the complaisant judge would not acknowledge the rights of the noble
Ajax, but gave to another what was due to him, the poet touched me even
more nearly:--
Thanked, and self-pleased: ay, let him wear
What to that noble breast was due;
And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare
Go through the homeless world with you.
The poem I admit does not sound very apposite in the year 1922, but it
well reflected my indignation some fifty years ago. The West might then
be regarded as the Ajax of the Nations. Nowadays, not even the youngest
of enthusiasts could think it necessary to show his devotion by wanting
to "go through the homeless world" with the richest and the most
powerful community on the face of the earth.
I am not going to make any show of false modesty by suggesting that
Americans may not care to read about the intimate details of my life and
opinions, or to follow "the adventure of living" of a journalist and a
public writer whose life, judged superficially, has been quite
uneventful. I read with pleasure the lives of American men and women
when they were not people of action, and I daresay people across the
Atlantic will pay me a similar compliment.
Yet--I should like to give a word or two of explanation as to the way in
which I have treated my subject. At first sight I expect that my book
will seem chaotic and bewildering, a mighty maze and quite without a
plan. As a matter of fact, however, the work was very carefully planned.
My sins of omission and of commission were deliberate and, as our
forefathers would have said, matters of art.
My first object was a negative one; that is, to avoid the kind of
autobiography in which the author waddles painfully, diligently, and
conscientiously along an arid path, which he has strewn, not with
flowers and fruits of joy, but with the cinders of the commonplace. My
readers know such autobiographies only too well. They are usually based
upon copious diaries and letters. The author, as soon as he gets to
maturity, spares us nothing. We look down endless vistas of dinners and
luncheon parties and of stories of how he met the celebrated Mr. Jones
at the house of the hardly less celebrated Mr. Smith and how they talked
about Mr. Robinson, the most celebrated of all of them. If I have done
nothing else worthy of gratitude, I have, at any rate, avoided such
predestinated dullness.
What I have made my prime object is the description of the influences
that have affected my life and, for good or evil, made me what I am. The
interesting thing about a human being is not only what he is, but how he
came to be what he is.
The main influence of my life has been _The Spectator_, and,
therefore, as will be seen, I have made _The Spectator_ the pivot
of my book, or, shall I say, the centre from which in telling my story I
have worked backwards and forwards. But this is not all. Though I pay a
certain homage to chronology and let my chapters mainly follow the
years, I am in this matter not too strict. Throughout, I obey the
instinct of the journalist and take good copy wherever I can find it. I
follow the scent while it is hot and do not say to myself or to my
readers that this or that would be out-of-place here, and must be
deferred to such and such a chapter, or to some portion of the book
giving an account of later years, devoted to miscellaneous anecdotes! In
a word, I am discursive not by accident, but by design.
If I am asked why I make this apologia, I shall have no difficulty in
replying. I desire to leave nothing unsaid which may bring me into
intimate touch with the greatest reading public that the world has ever
seen-and, to my mind, a public as worthy as it is great.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
May 5, 1922
POSTSCRIPT TO AMERICAN PREFACE
_While this book and preface is going through the press, I cannot
resist adding a Postscript on a point suggested by my publisher. It is
that I should say something which may inform the new generation as to
"The Spectator's" position during the Civil War.
"The Spectator" was as strong a friend of America in past years as it is
at present, and in those past years its friendship was the more useful
because the need for a true understanding between all parts of the
English-speaking race was not realised by nearly so many people as it is
now. That there was ever any essential bitterness of feeling here or in
America I will not admit for a moment, but that there was ignorance,
pig-headedness, and want of vision, is beyond all doubt. This want of
vision was specially illustrated during the Civil War. "The Spectator,"
however, I am proud to say, without being unjust to the South, or
failing to note its gallantry, and its noble sacrifices even in a wrong
cause, was consistently on the side of the North. Moreover, it realised
that the North was going to win, and ought to win, and so would abolish
slavery. There is a special tradition at the "Spectator" office of which
we are very proud. It is that the military critic of "The Spectator," at
that time Mr. Hooper, a civilian but with an extraordinary flair for
strategy, divined exactly what Sherman was doing when he started on his
famous march. Many years afterwards General Sherman, either in a speech
or on the written page, for I cannot now verify the fact, though I am
perfectly certain of it, said that when he started with the wires cut
behind him, there were only two people in the world who knew what his
objective was. One was himself and the other, as he said, "an anonymous
writer in the London 'Spectator.'" My American readers will understand
why I and all connected with "The Spectator" are intensely proud of this
fact. The fate, not only of America but of the whole English-speaking
race, hung upon the success of Sherman's feat of daring. In turn that
success hung upon the fact that Sherman's objective was the sea. To have
divined that was a notable achievement in the art of publicity._
J. ST. L. S.
CONTENTS
I.--HOW I CAME TO _The Spectator_
II.--HOW I CAME TO _The Spectator (Continued)_
III.--MY PHYSICAL HOME, MY FAMILY, AND MY GOOD FORTUNE THEREIN
IV.--MY FATHER
V.--MY FATHER'S STORIES OF THE STRACHEY FAMILY
VI.--MY CHILDHOOD AND SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL INCIDENTS
VII.--MY CHILDHOOD (_Continued_)
VIII.--THE FAMILY NURSE
IX.--BOYHOOD: POETRY AND METRE
X.--OXFORD
XI.--A CLASSICAL EDUCATION
XII.--AN OXFORD FRIENDSHIP
XIII.--OXFORD MEMORIES
XIV.--PRESS WORK IN LONDON
XV.--THE "CORNHILL"
XVI.--MEREDITH TOWNSEND
XVII.--MEREDITH TOWNSEND (_Continued_)
XVIII.--MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES
XIX.--MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES (_Continued_)
XX.--THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM
XXI.--THE PLACE OF THE JOURNALIST IN MODERN LIFE
XXII.--A WAR EPISODE--MY AMERICAN TEA-PARTIES
XXIII.--IDYLLS OF THE WAR
XXIV.--FIVE GREAT MEN
XXV.--FIVE GREAT MEN (Continued)
XXVI.--MY POLITICAL OPINIONS
XXVII.--MY POLITICAL OPINIONS (Continued)
XXVIII.--UNWRITTEN CHAPTERS
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. LOE STRACHEY [Frontispiece] From a drawing by W. Rothenstein.
VIEW OF NORTH FRONT OF SUTTON COURT, IN THE COUNTY OF SOMERSET, THE
FAMILY HOUSE OF THE STRACHEYS
SIR EDWARD STRACHEY IN THE HALL AT SUTTON COURT, WITH HIS FAVOURITE CAT
From a picture by his son Henry Strachey.
JOHN STRACHEY, THE FRIEND OF LOCKE
THE CLOSE, SUTTON COURT, SOMERSET
SUTTON COURT, SOMERSET
SUTTON COURT, SOMERSET
MRS. SALOME LEAKER,--"THE FAMILY NURSE"
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY,--ÆTAT 16 From a photograph done at Cannes, about
1876.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY AS AN OXFORD FRESHMAN, ÆTAT 18 MEREDITH TOWNSEND,
EDITOR OF THE "FRIEND OF INDIA," AND HIS MOONSHEE, THE PUNDIT OOMACANTO
MUKAJI, DOCTOR OF LOGIC IN THE MUDDEH UNIVERSITY Taken at Serampore,
Bengal, in 1849.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY, ÆTAT. 32
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY AT NEWLANDS CORNER, ÆTAT. 45
THE ADVENTURE OF LIVING
CHAPTER I
HOW I CAME TO "THE SPECTATOR"
Sir Thomas Browne gave his son an admirable piece of literary advice.
The young son had been travelling in Hungary and proposed to write an
account of what he had seen. His father approved the project, but urged
him strongly not to trouble himself about the methods of extracting iron
and copper from the ores, or with a multitude of facts and statistics.
These were matters in which there was no need to be particular. But, he
added, his son must on no account forget to give a full description of
the "Roman alabaster tomb in the barber's shop at Pesth."
In writing my recollections I mean to keep always before me the
alabaster tomb in the barber's shop rather than a view of life which is
based on high politics, or even high literature. At first sight it may
seem as if the life of an editor is not likely to contain very much of
the alabaster tomb element. In truth, however, every life is an
adventure, and if a sense of this adventure cannot be communicated to
the reader, one may feel sure that it is the fault of the writer, not of
the facts. A dull man might make a dull thing of his autobiography even
if he had lived through the French Revolution; whereas a country curate
might thrill the world with his story, provided that his mind were cast
in the right mould and that he found a quickening interest in its
delineation. Barbellion's _Diary_ provides the proof. The interest
of that supremely interesting book lies in the way of telling.
But how is one to know what will interest one's readers? That is a
difficult question. Clearly it is no use to put up a man of straw, call
him the Public, and then try to play down to him or up to him and his
alleged and purely hypothetical opinions and tastes. Those who attempt
to fawn upon the puppet of their own creation are as likely as not to
end by interesting nobody. At any rate, try and please yourself, then at
least one person's liking is engaged. That is the autobiographer's
simple secret.
All the same there is a better reason than that. Pleasure is contagious.
He who writes with zest will infect his readers. The man who argues,
"This seems stupid and tedious to me, but I expect it is what the public
likes," is certain to make shipwreck of his endeavour.
The pivot of my life has been _The Spectator_, and so _The
Spectator_ must be the pivot of my book--the point upon which it and
I and all that is mine turn. I therefore make no apology for beginning
this book with the story of how I came to _The Spectator_.
My father, a friend of both the joint editors, Mr. Hutton and Mr.
Townsend, was a frequent contributor to the paper. In a sense,
therefore, I was brought up in a "Spectator" atmosphere. Indeed, the
first contributions ever made by me to the press were two sonnets which
appeared in its pages, one in the year 1875 and the other in 1876. I did
not, however, begin serious journalistic work in _The Spectator_,
but, curiously enough, in its rival, _The Saturday Review_. While I
was at Oxford I sent several middle articles to _The Saturday_, got
them accepted, and later, to my great delight, received novels and poems
for review. I also wrote occasionally in _The Pall Mall_, in the
days in which it was edited by Lord Morley, and in _The Academy_.
It was not until I settled down in London to read for the Bar, a year
and a half after I had left Oxford, that I made any attempt to write for
_The Spectator_. In the last few days of 1885 I got my father to
give me a formal introduction to the editors, and went to see them in
Wellington Street. They told me, as in my turn I have had to tell so
many would-be reviewers, what no doubt was perfectly true, namely that
they had already got more outside reviewers than they could possibly
find work for, and that they were sorry to say I must not count upon
their being able to give me books. All the same, they would like me to
take away a couple of volumes to notice,--making it clear, however, that
they did this out of friendship for my father.
I was given my choice of books, and the two I chose were a new edition
of _Gulliver's Travels_, well illustrated in colour by a French
artist, and, if I remember rightly, the _Memoirs of Henry
Greville_, the brother of the great Greville. I will not say that I
departed from the old _Spectator_ offices at 1 Wellington Street--a
building destined to play so great a part in my life--in dudgeon or even
in disappointment. I had not expected very much. Still, no man, young or
old, cares to have it made quite clear that a door at which he wishes to
enter is permanently shut against him.
However, I was not likely to be depressed for long at so small a matter
as this; I was much too full of enjoyment in my new London life. The
wide world affords nothing to equal one's first year in London--at
least, that was my feeling. My first year at Oxford had been delightful,
as were also the three following, but there was to me something in the
throb of the great pulse of London which, as a stimulant, nay, an
excitant, of the mind, even Oxford could not rival.
For once I had plenty of leisure to enjoy the thrilling drama of life--a
drama too often dimmed by the cares, the business, or even the pleasures
of the onlooker. A Bar student is not overworked, and if he is not rich,
or socially sought after, he can find, as I did, plenty of time in which
to look around him and enjoy the scene. That exhilaration, that luxury
of leisurely circumspection may never return, or only, as happily in my
own case, with the grand climacteric. Once more I see and enjoy the
gorgeous drama by the Thames.
To walk every morning to the Temple or to Lincoln's Inn, where I was
reading in Chambers, was a feast. Then there were theatres, balls,
dances, dinners, and a thousand splendid sights to be enjoyed, for I was
then, as I have always been and am now, an indefatigable sightseer. I
would, I confess, to this day go miles to see the least promising of
curiosities or antiquities. "Who knows? it may be one of the wonders of
the world" has always been my order of the day.
I was aware of my good fortune. I remember thinking how much more
delightful it must be to come fresh to London than to be like so many of
my friends, Londoners born and bred. They could not be thrilled as I was
by the sight of St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, or by the scimitar
curve of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster. Through the
National Gallery or the British Museum I paced a king. The vista of the
London River as I went to Greenwich intoxicated me like heady wine. And
Hampton Court in the spring, _Ut vidi ut perii_--"How I saw, how I
perished." It was all a pageant of pure pleasure, and I walked on air,
eating the fruit of the Hesperides.
But though I was so fully convinced that the doors of _The
Spectator_ were shut against me, I was, of course, determined that my
two reviews should, if possible, make the editors feel what a huge
mistake they had made and what a loss they were incurring. But, alas!
here I encountered a great disappointment. When I had written my reviews
they appeared to me to be total failures! I was living at the time in an
"upper part" in South Molton Street, in which I, my younger brother,
Henry Strachey, and two of my greatest friends, the present Sir Bernard
Mallet and his younger brother Stephen Mallet, had set up house. I
remember to this day owning to my brother that though I had intended my
review of _Gulliver's Travels_ to be epoch-making, it had turned
out a horrible fiasco. However, I somehow felt I should only flounder
deeper into the quagmire of my own creation if I rewrote the two
reviews. Accordingly, they were sent off in the usual way. Knowing my
father's experience in such matters, I did not expect to get them back
in type for many weeks. As a matter of fact, they came back quite
quickly. I corrected the proofs and returned them. To my astonishment
the review of Swift appeared almost at once. I supposed, in the luxury
of depression, that they wished to cast the rubbish out of the way as
quickly as possible.
My first intention was not to go again to _The Spectator_ office,
the place where I was so obviously not wanted, but I remembered that my
father had told me that it was always the custom to return books as soon
as the proofs were corrected or the articles had appeared. I determined,
therefore, that I would do the proper thing, though I felt rather shy,
and feared I might be looked upon as "cadging" for work.
With my books under my arm I walked off to Wellington Street, on a
Tuesday morning, and went up to Mr. Hutton's room, where on that day the
two editors used to spend the greater part of the morning discussing the
coming issue of the paper. I had prepared a nice little impromptu
speech, which was to convey in unmistakable terms that I had not come to
ask for more books; "I fully realise and fully acquiesce in your
inability to use my work." When I went in I was most cordially received,
and almost immediately Mr. Hutton asked me to look over a pile of new
books and see if there was anything there I would like. This appeared to
be my cue, and I accordingly proceeded to explain that I had not come to
ask for more books but only to bring back the two books I had already
reviewed and to thank the editors. I quite understood that there was no
more work for me.
Then, to my amazement, Mr. Townsend, with that vividness of expression
which was his, said something to the effect that they had only said that
when they didn't know that I could write. The position, it appeared, had
been entirely changed by the review of _Gulliver's Travels_ and
they hoped very much that I should be able to do regular work for _The
Spectator_. Mr. Hutton chimed in with equally kind and appreciative
words, and I can well remember the pleasant confusion caused in my mind
by the evident satisfaction of my future chiefs. I was actually hailed
as "a writer and critic of the first force."
To say that I returned home elated would not be exactly true. Bewildered
would more accurately describe my state of mind. I had genuinely
believed that my attempt to give the final word of criticism upon
_Gulliver's Travels_--that is what a young man always thinks, and
ought to think, he is doing in the matter of literary criticism--had
been a total failure. Surely I couldn't be wrong about my own work. Yet
_The Spectator_ editors were evidently not mad or pulling my leg or
even flattering me! It was a violent mystery.
Of course I was pleased at heart, but I tried to unload some of my
liabilities to Nemesis by the thought that my new patrons would probably
get tired of my manner of writing before very long. What had captured
them for the moment was merely a certain novelty of style. They would
very soon see through it, as I had done in my poignant self-criticism.
But this prudent view was before long, in a couple of days, to be exact,
knocked on the head by a delightful letter which Mr. Townsend wrote to
my father. In it he expressed himself even more strongly in regard to
the review than he had done in speaking to me.
I honestly think that what I liked best in the whole business was the
element of adventure. There was something thrilling and, so, intensely
delightful to me in the thought, that I had walked down to Wellington
Street, like a character in a novel, prepared for a setback, only to
find that Fate was there, "hid in an auger-hole," ready to rush and
seize me. Somehow or other I felt, though I would not admit it even to
myself, that the incident had been written in the Book of Destiny, and
that it was one which was going to affect my whole life. Of course,
being, like other young men, a creature governed wholly by reason and
good sense, I scouted the notion of a destined day as sentimental and
ridiculous. Still, the facts were "as stated," and could not be
altogether denied.
Looking back at the lucky accident which brought the right book, the
right reviewer, and the properly-tuned editors together, I am bound to
say that I think that the editors were right and that I had produced
good copy. At any rate, their view being what it was, I have no sort of
doubt that they were quite right to express it as plainly and as
generously as they did to me. To have followed the conventional rule of
not puffing up a young man with praise and to have guarded their true
opinion as a kind of guilty secret would have been distinctly unfair to
me, nay, prejudicial. There are, I suppose, a certain number of young
people to whom it would be unsafe to give a full measure of eulogy. But
these are a small minority. The ordinary young man or young woman is
much more likely to be encouraged or sometimes even alarmed by unstinted
praise. Generous encouragement is the necessary mental nourishment of
youth, and those who withhold it from them are not only foolish but
cruel. They are keeping food from the hungry.
If my editors had told me that they thought the review rather a poor
piece of work, I should, by "the law of reversed effort," have been
almost certain to have taken up a combative line and have convinced
myself that it was epoch-making. When a man thinks himself overpraised,
if he has anything in him at all, he begins to get anxious about his
next step. He is put very much on his mettle not to lose what he has
gained.
It may amuse my readers, if I quote a few sentences from the article,
and allow them to see whether their judgment coincides with that of my
chiefs at _The Spectator_ on a matter which was for me fraught with
the decrees of Destiny. This is how I began my review of Swift and his
masterpiece:
"Never anyone living thought like you," said to Swift the woman who
loved him with a passion that had caught some of his own fierceness and
despair. The love which great natures inspire had endowed Vanessa with a
rare inspiration. Half-consciously she has touched the notes that help
us to resolve the discord in Swift's life. Truly, the mind of living man
never worked as Swift's worked. That this is so is visible in every
line, in every word he ever wrote. No phrase of his is like any other
man's; no conception of his is ever cast in the common mould. It is this
that lends something so dreadful and mysterious to all Swift's writings.
From this time I began to get books regularly from _The Spectator_
and to pay periodical visits to the office, where I learned to
understand and to appreciate my chiefs. But more of them later. The year
1886 was one of political convulsion, the year of the great split in the
Liberal Party; the year in which Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain
finally severed themselves from Mr. Gladstone and began that co-
operation with the Conservatives which resulted in the formation of the
Unionist Party. I do not, however, want to deal here with the Unionist
crisis, except so far as it affected me and _The Spectator_. While
my father and my elder brother remained Liberals and followed Mr.
Gladstone, I followed Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Goschen.
My conversion was not in any way sought by my new friends and chiefs at
_The Spectator_ office, though they at once took the Unionist side.
I have no doubt, however, that my intercourse with Hutton and Townsend
had its effect, though I also think that my mind was naturally Unionist
in politics. I was already a Lincoln worshipper in American history and
desired closer union with the Dominions, not separation. I was for
concentration, not dispersion, in the Empire. In any case, I took the
plunge, one which might have been painful if my father had not been the
most just, the most fair-minded, and the most kind-hearted of men.
Although he was an intense, nay, a fierce Gladstonian, I never had the
slightest feeling of estrangement from him or he from me. It happened,
however, that the break-up of the Liberal Party affected me greatly at
_The Spectator_. When the election of 1886 took place, I was asked
by a friend and Somersetshire neighbour, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, who had
become, like me, a Liberal Unionist, to act as his election agent. This
I did, though, as a matter of fact, he was unopposed. The moment he was
declared elected I made out my return as election agent and went
straight back to my work in London. Almost at once I received a letter
which surprised me enormously. It was from Mr. Hutton, telling me that
Mr. Townsend had gone away for his usual summer holiday, and that he
wanted someone to come and help him by writing a couple of leaders a
week and some of the notes. I, of course, was delighted at the prospect,
for my mind was full of politics and I was longing to have my say. Here
again, though it did not consciously occur to me that I was in for
anything big, I seem to have had some sort of subconscious premonition.
At any rate, I accepted with delight and well remember my talk at the
office before taking up my duties. My editor explained to me that Mr.
Asquith, who had been up till the end of 1885 the writer of a weekly
leader in _The Spectator_ and also a holiday writer, had now
severed his connection with the paper, owing to his entry into active
politics. It did not occur to me, however, that I was likely to get the
post of regular leader-writer in his stead, though this was what
actually happened.
I left the office, I remember, greatly pleased with the two subjects
upon which I was to write. The first article was to be an exhortation to
the Conservative side of the Unionist Party not to be led into thinking
that they were necessarily a minority in the country and that they could
not expect any but a minute fraction of working-men to be on their side.
With all the daring of twenty-six I set out to teach the Conservative
party their business. This is how I began my article which appeared on
the 24th of July, 1886.
In their hearts the Conservatives cannot really believe that anyone with
less than £100 a year willingly votes on their side. A victory in a
popular constituency always astonishes them. They cannot restrain a
feeling that by all the rules of reason and logic they ought to have
lost. What inducement, they wonder, can the working-men have to vote for
them? Lord Beaconsfield, of course, never shared such notions as
these.... Yet his party never sincerely believed what he told them, and
only followed him because they saw no other escape from their
difficulties. The last extension of the franchise has again shown that
he was right, and that in no conditions of life do Englishmen vote as a
herd.
Here is how I ended it:
Conciliation or Coercion was the cry everywhere. And yet the majority of
the new voters, to their eternal honour, proved their political infancy
so full of sense and patriotism that they let go by unheeded the appeals
to their class-prejudices and to their emotions, and chose, instead, the
harder and seemingly less generous policy, based on reason rather than
on sentiment, on conviction rather than on despair. As the trial was
severe, so is the honour due to the new voters lasting and conspicuous.
The length of the quotation is justified by its effect on--my life. For
me it has another interest. In re-reading it, I note that, right or
wrong, it takes exactly the view of the English democracy which I have
always taken and which I hold today as strongly as I did forty years
ago.
The article had an instant reaction. It delighted Mr. Townsend, who,
though he did not _know_ it was by me, guessed that it was mine,
and wrote at once to ask me whether, when Mr. Hutton went on his
holiday, I could remain at work as his assistant. Very soon after, he
suggested, with a swift generosity that still warms my heart, that if I
liked to give up the Bar, for which I was still supposing myself to be
reading, I could have a permanent place at _The Spectator_, and
even, if I remember rightly, hinted that I might look forward to
succeeding the first of the two partners who died or retired, and so to
becoming joint editor or joint proprietor. That prospect I do admit took
away my breath. With the solemn caution of youth, or at any rate with
youth's delight in irony in action, I almost felt that I should have to
go and make representations to my chief about his juvenile impetuosity
and want of care and prudence. Surely he must see that he had not had
enough experience of me yet to make so large a proposition, that it was
absurd, and so forth. _O sancta simplicitas!_
CHAPTER II
HOW I CAME TO "THE SPECTATOR" (_Continued_)
Even the success chronicled in the preceding chapter did not exhaust the
store of good luck destined for my first appearance as a political
leader-writer. Fate again showed its determination to force me upon
_The Spectator_. When I arrived at the office on the Tuesday
morning following the publication of the number of the paper in which my
first two leaders appeared, I found that the second leader had done even
better than the first. Its title seemed appallingly dull, and, I
remember, called forth a protest from Mr. Hutton when I suggested
writing it. It was entitled "The Privy Council and the Colonies." I had
always been an ardent Imperialist, and I had taken to Constitutional Law
like a duck to the water, and felt strongly, like so many young men
before me, the intellectual attraction of legal problems and still more
the majesty and picturesqueness of our great Tribunals. Especially had I
been fascinated by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and its
world-wide jurisdiction. I had even helped to draw some pleadings in a
Judicial Committee case when in Chambers. Accordingly, though with some
difficulty, I persuaded Mr. Hutton to let me have my say and show what a
potent bond of Empire was to be found therein. I also wanted to
emphasise how further ties of Imperial unity might be developed on
similar lines--a fact, I may say, which was not discovered by the
practical politicians till about the year 1912, or twenty-seven years
later.
Now it happened that Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, though beaten at the
elections, had not yet gone out of office. It also happened that Lord
Granville, then Colonial Secretary, was to receive the Agents-General of
the self-governing Colonies, as they were then called, on the Saturday;
and finally, that Lord Granville had a fit of the gout. The result of
the last fact was that he had to put off preparing his speech till the
last possible moment. When he had been wheeled in a chair into the
reception-room--his foot was too painful to allow him to walk--he began
his address to the Deputation in these terms:
In a very remarkable article which appears in this week's
_Spectator_ it is pointed out "that people are apt to overlook the
importance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as one of the
bonds that unite the Colonies and the Mother Country."
He then went on to use the article as the foundation for his speech. I
had talked about the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council being a
body which "binds without friction and links without strain," and Lord
Granville did the same.
But of this speech I knew nothing when I entered The _Spectator_
office on my fateful second Tuesday. I was only intent to get
instructions for new leaders. Besides, I had been away on a country-
house visit from the Saturday to the Monday, and had missed Monday's
_Times_. I was therefore immensely surprised when Mr. Hutton, from
the depths of his beard, asked me in deep tones whether I had seen
_The Times_ of Monday, and what was said therein about my Privy
Council article. I admit that for a moment I thought I had been guilty
of some appalling blunder and that, as the soldiers say, I was "for it"
However, I saw that I must face the music as best I could, and admitted
that I had not seen the paper. "Then you ought to have," was Mr.
Hutton's not very reassuring reply. He got up, went to a side-table,
and, after much digging into a huge heap of papers, extracted Monday's
_Times_ and with his usual gruff good-temper read out the opening
words of Lord Granville's speech. He was, in fact, greatly delighted,
and almost said in so many words that it wasn't every day that the
Editors of _The Spectator_ could draw Cabinet Ministers to
advertise their paper.
Certainly it was astonishingly good luck for a "commencing journalist"
to bring down two birds with two articles, _i.e._, to hit one of
his own editors with one article, and to bag a Cabinet Minister with the
other.
No doubt the perfectly cautious man would have said, "This is an
accident, a mere coincidence, it means nothing and will never happen
again." Fortunately people do not argue in that rational and statistical
spirit. All my chiefs knew or cared was that I had written good stuff
and on a very technical subject, and that I had caught the ear of the
man who, considering the subject, most mattered--the Secretary of State
for the Colonies.
Anyway, my two first trial leaders had done the trick and I was from
that moment free of _The Spectator_. Townsend's holiday succeeded
to Hutton's, and when the holidays were over, including my own, which
not unnaturally took me to Venice,--"_Italiam petimus_" should
always be the motto of an English youth,--I returned to take up the
position of a weekly leader-writer and holiday-understudy, a mixed post
which by the irony of fate, as I have already said, had just been
vacated by Mr. Asquith. Here was an adventure indeed, and I can say
again with perfect sincerity that for me the greatest delight of the
whole thing was this element of the Romantic.
I was quite sensible that I had had the devil's own luck in my capture
of a post on _The Spectator_. Indeed, I very much preferred that,
to the thought that the good fortune that was mine was the reward of a
grinding and ignoble perseverance. I was in no mood for the drab
virtues. I hugged the thought that it was not through my merits but
because I possessed a conquering star that I had got where I was.
Curiously enough, I had never dreamed of joining _The Spectator_
staff or even of becoming its Editor. I had imagined every other sort of
strange and sudden preferment, of frantic proprietors asking me at a
moment's notice to edit their papers, or of taking up some great and
responsible position, but never of carrying by assault 1 Wellington
Street. But that, of course, made it all the more delightful. No one
could have prepared me a greater or a more grateful surprise.
It is strange to look back and see how at this moment that mystery which
we barbarously call "the force of circumstances" seemed to have
determined not merely to drive in my nail but to hammer it up to the
head. It happened that both Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend had great belief
in the literary judgment of Canon Ainger, a man, it is to be feared, now
almost forgotten, but whose opinion was looked upon in the 'eighties and
'nineties with something approaching reverence.
In 1886--my "Spectator" year, as I may call it--when I was acting as
election-agent to Mr. Henry Hobhouse, I happened to be searching in the
old library at Hadspen House for something to read, something with which
to occupy the time of waiting between the issue of the writ and
nomination-day. If there was to be no opposition it did not seem worth
while to get too busy over the electorate. We remained, therefore, in a
kind of enchanter's circle until nomination-day was over. It was a time
in which everybody whispered mysteriously that a very strong candidate,
name unknown, would suddenly appear at Yeovil, Langport, or Chard--I
forget which of these pleasant little towns was the place of nomination
--and imperil our chances. As was natural to me then, and, I must
confess, would be natural to me now, my search for a book took me
straight to that part of the library in which the poets congregated. My
eye wandered over the shelves, and lighted upon _Poems in the
Dorsetshire Dialect_ by the Rev. William Barnes. Hadspen House was
quite close to the Dorset border. I was interested and I took down the
volume. I don't think I had ever heard of Barnes before, but being very
fond of the Somersetshire dialect and proud of my ability to speak in
it, my first impulse was rather to turn up my nose at the vernacular of
a neighbouring county. It was, then, with a decided inclination to look
a gift-horse in the mouth that I retired with Barnes to my den. Yet, as
Hafiz says, "by this a world was affected." I opened the poems at the
enchanting stanzas, "Lonesome woodlands! zunny woodlands!" and was
transported. In a moment I realised that for me a new foot was on the
earth, a new name come down from Heaven. I read and read, and can still
remember how the exquisite rhythm of "Woak Hill" was swept into my mind,
to make there an impression which will never be obliterated while life
lives in my brain. I did not know, in that delirium of exaltation which
a poetic discovery always makes in the heart of a youth, whether most to
admire the bold artifice of the man who had adapted an unrhymed Persian
metre--the Pearl--to the needs of a poem in the broadest Dorsetshire
dialect, or the deep intensity of the emotion with which he had clothed
a glorious piece of prosodiac scholarship.
I recognised at once that the poem was fraught with a pathos as
magnificent as anything in the whole range of classic literature--and
also that this pathos had that touch of stableness in sorrow which we
associate, and rightly associate, with the classics. Miserably bad
scholar as I was, and am, I knew enough to see that the Dorsetshire
schoolmaster and village parson had dared to challenge the deified
Virgil himself. The depth of feeling in the lines--
An' took her wi' air-reachen arm
To my zide at Woak Hill
is not exceeded even by those which tell how Æneas filled his arms with
the empty air when he stretched them to enfold the dead Creusa.
Upon the last two stanzas in "Woak Hill" I may as truly be said to have
lived for a month as Charles Lamb lived upon "Rose Aylmer."
An' that's why folk thought, for a season,
My mind were a-wandren
Wi' sorrow, when I wer so sorely
A-tried at Woak Hill.
But no; that my Mary mid never
Behold herzelf slighted,
I wanted to think that I guided
My guide from Woak Hill.
Equally potent was the spell cast by what is hardly less great a poem
than "Woak Hill," the enchanting "Evenen, an' Maids out at Door." There
the Theocritus of the West dares to use not merely the words of common
speech and primitive origin, but words drawn from Low Latin and of
administrative connotation. Barnes achieves this triumph in words with
perfect ease. He can use a word like "parish" not, as Crabbe did, for
purposes of pure narration but in a passage of heightened rhetoric:
But when you be a-lost vrom the parish, zome more Will come on in your
pleazen to bloom an' to die; An' the zummer will always have maidens
avore Their doors, vor to chatty an' zee volk goo by.
For daughters ha' mornen when mothers ha' night, An' there's beauty
alive when the fairest is dead; As when one sparklen wave do zink down
from the light, Another do come up an' catch it instead.
Rightly did the Edinburgh reviewer of the 'thirties, in noticing Barnes's
poems--the very edition from which I was reading, perfect, by the way,
in its ribbed paper and clear print--declare "there has been no such art
since Horace." And here I may interpolate that the reviewer in question
was Mr. George Venables, who was within a year to become a friend of
mine. He and his family were close friends of my wife's people, and when
after my marriage I met him, a common love of Barnes brought together
the ardent worshipper of the new schools of poetry, for such I was, and
the old and distinguished lawyer who was Thackeray's contemporary at the
Charterhouse. Barnes was for us both a sign of literary freemasonry
which at once made us recognise each other as fellow-craftsmen.
Bewildered readers will ask how my discovery of Barnes affected my
position at _The Spectator_. It happened in this way. A couple of
weeks after I had been established at _The Spectator_ as a
"_verus socius_" Barnes died, at a very great age. It was one of
those cases in which death suddenly makes a man visible to the
generation into which he has survived. Barnes had outlived not only his
contemporaries but his renown, and most of the journalists detailed to
write his obituary notice had evidently found it a hard task to say why
he should be held in remembrance.
But by a pure accident here was I, in the high tide of my enthusiasm for
my new poet. Needless to say I was only too glad to have a chance to let
myself go on Barnes, and so was entrusted with the Barnes Obituary
article for _The Spectator_.
The result was that the next week my chiefs showed me a letter one of
them had received from Canon Ainger, asking for the name of the
"evidently new hand" who had written on Barnes, and making some very
complimentary remarks on his work. It was eminently characteristic of
them that instead of being a little annoyed at being told that an
article had appeared in _The Spectator_ with an unexpected literary
charm, they were as genuinely delighted as I was.
In any case, the incident served, as I have said, to drive the nail up
to the head and to make Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend feel that they had
not been rash in their choice, and had got a man who could do literature
as well as politics.
Not being without a sense of superstition, at any rate where cats are
concerned, and a devout lover of "the furred serpent," I may record the
last, the complete rite of my initiation at _The Spectator_ office.
While I was one day during my novitiate talking over articles and
waiting for instructions--or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to
write about, for that very soon became the routine--a large,
consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat slowly entered the room,
walked round me, sniffed at my legs in a suspicious manner, and then, to
my intense amazement and amusement, hurled himself from the floor with
some difficulty and alighted upon my shoulder. Mr. Townsend, who loved
anything dramatic, though he did not love animals as Mr. Hutton did,
pointed to the cat and muttered dramatically, "Hutton, just look at
that!"
He went on to declare that the cat very seldom honoured "upstairs" with
his presence, but kept himself, as a rule, strictly to himself, in the
basement. Apparently, however, the sagacious beast had realised that
there was a new element in the office, and had come to inspect it and
see whether he could give it his approval or not. When it was given, it
was conceded by all concerned that the appointment had received its
consecration. Like "the Senior Fellow" in Sir Frederick Pollock's poem
on the College Cat, I was passed by the highest authority in the office.
One said, "The Senior Fellow's vote!"
The Senior Fellow, black of coat,
Save where his front was white,
Arose and sniffed the stranger's shoes
With critic nose, as ancients use
To judge mankind aright.
I--for 'twas I who tell the tale--
Conscious of fortune's trembling scale,
Awaited the decree;
But Tom had judged: "He loves our race,"
And, as to his ancestral place,
He leapt upon my knee.
Thenceforth, in common-room and hall,
A _verus socius_ known to all,
I came and went and sat,
Far from cross fate's or envy's reach;
For none a title could impeach
Accepted by the cat.
It was at this time that Mr. Townsend wrote me, on behalf of himself and
his partner, a letter stating definitely that if I would devote myself
to _The Spectator_, he and Hutton would guarantee me at once a
certain salary, though I might still take any work I liked outside. But
this was not all. The letter went on to say that the first of the
partners who died or retired would offer me a half-share of the paper.
It was pointed out that, of course, that might conceivably mean a fairly
long apprenticeship, but that it was far more likely to mean a short
one. It proved to be neither the one nor the other, but what might be
called a compromise period of some ten years.
And so in the course of a very few weeks my fate had been decided for me
and the question I had so often put to myself: Should I stick to the Bar
or throw in my lot with journalism? was answered. A great wave had
seized me and cast me up upon the shore of 1 Wellington Street. I felt
breathless but happy. Though I did not fully realise how deeply my life
had been affected by the decision or how strange in some ways was the
course that lay before me, I had an instinctive feeling that I must
follow wholeheartedly the path of Destiny. I determined to free my mind
from all thoughts of a return to the Bar. I shut my eyes for ever to the
vision of myself as Lord Chancellor or Lord Chief Justice--a vision that
has haunted every young man who has ever embarked upon the study of
English Law;--the vision of which Dr. Johnson, even at the end of his
life, could not speak without profound emotion.
I acted promptly. I at once gave up my nice little room in the Temple.
It was about eight foot square, furnished with one table, one arm-chair,
one cane chair, and a bookcase, and dignified by the name of Chambers. I
sometimes wonder now whether, if I could have looked down the long
avenue of the years and seen the crowded, turbulent series of events
which, as Professor Einstein has taught us, was rushing upon me like a
tiger on its prey, I should have been alarmed or not. I should have seen
many things exciting, many things sad, many things difficult, but above
all I should have seen what could only have been described as a
veritable snowstorm of written and printed pages.
I have sometimes, as every man will, reversed the process, looked back
and reviewed the past. On such occasions I have been half inclined to
make the reflection, common to all journalists, when they survey the
monumental works of our brethren in the superior ranks of the literary
profession: "Have I not cast my life and energy away on things ephemeral
and unworthy? Have not I preferred a kind of glorified pot-boiling to
the service of the spirit?" In the end, however, like the painter with
the journalist's heart in Robert Browning's poem, I console myself for
having enlisted among the tradesmen of literature rather than among the
artists:
For I have done some service in my time,
And not been paid profusely.
Let some great soul write my six thousand leaders!
It is, I admit, an appalling thought to have covered so much paper and
used so much ink. But, after all, an apology may be made for mere volume
in journalism analogous to that made for it by Dr. Johnson when he said
that poets must to some extent be judged by their quantity as well as
their quality. Anyway, I am inclined to be proud of my output. When an
occasion like the present makes me turn back to my old articles, I am
glad to say that my attitude, far from being one of shame, is more like
that of the Duke of Wellington. When quite an old man, somebody brought
him his Indian Despatches to look over. As he read he is recorded to
have muttered: "Damned good! I don't know how the devil I ever managed
to write 'em."
The tale of how I came to _The Spectator_ is finished. I must now
describe what sort of a youth it was who got there, and what were the
influences that had gone to his making.
CHAPTER III
MY PHYSICAL HOME, MY FAMILY, AND MY GOOD FORTUNE THEREIN
The autobiographer, or at any rate the writer of the type of
autobiography on which I am engaged, need not apologise for being
egotistical. If he is not that he is nothing. He must start with the
assumption that people want to hear about him and to hear it from
himself. Further, he must be genuinely and actively interested in his
own life and therefore write about it willingly and with zest. If you
get anywhere near the position of an autobiographer, "_invitus_,"
addressing a reader, "_invitum_," the game is up.
It would, then, be an absurdity to pretend to avoid egotism.
It would be almost as futile to apologise for being trivial. All details
of human life are interesting, or can be made interesting, especially if
they can be shown to be contributory to the development of the subject
on the Anatomy-table. The elements that contributed to the building up
of the man under observation are sure to be worth recording.
The autobiographer who is going to succeed with his task must set down
whatever he believes went to the making of his mind and soul, and of
that highly composite product which constitutes a human being. Nothing
is too small or too unimportant to be worthy of record. But people to
whom criticism is a passion and who love it even more than life, and
they are often very valuable people, will say, "Are we not, then, to be
allowed to dub your book trivial, if we think so?" Of course they must
have that license, but they must make good the plea of triviality, not
in the facts but in the exposition. _There_ no man has a right to
be trivial, or empty, or commonplace. Whatever is recorded must be
recorded worthily.
Take a plain example. If I set forth to describe my crossing Waterloo
Bridge on a particular day in a particular year, I must not merely on
that ground be attacked for triviality. I may be able to show, in the
first place, that the crossing by that bridge and not, let us say, by
using Hungerford Bridge or Blackfriars Bridge, affected my life. I may
also be able to describe my walk or drive in such a way that it will
make a deep impress upon the reader's mind. In a word, to get judgment
against me, the critic must demur, not on my facts but on a point of
literature, that is, on my method of presentation.
In considering the multitude of things which have gone to make me what I
am, which have drawn into a single strand the innumerable threads that
the Fates have been spinning for me ever since they began their dread
business, what strikes me most of all and first of all is my good
fortune. I may, on a future occasion, complain that in middle life and
in later life I did not have good luck, but bad luck, but I should be an
ingrate to Destiny if I did not admit that nothing could have been more
happy than the circumstances with which I was surrounded at my birth--
the circumstances which made the boy, who made the youth, who made the
man.
Above all, I was fortunate in my father and my mother. Though I must put
them first in honour on my record, as first in time and in memory, I can
show them best by touching in a preliminary study on those surroundings,
moral and intellectual, into which I was born.
[Illustration: View of the North Front of Sutton Court, in the County of
Somerset, the Family House of the Stracheys.]
In the first place, I count myself specially happy in that my parents
were people of moderate fortune. They were not too poor to give me the
pleasures and the freedoms of a liberal education, and of all that used
to be included in the phrase "easy circumstances." Ours was a pleasant
and leisurely way of life, undisturbed by the major worries and
anxieties of narrow means.
On the other hand, my home surroundings were not of the pompous,
luxurious kind which makes nothing moral or physical matter very much,
which drowns a man in security. I knew what it was to want a thing, and
to be told that it was much too expensive to be thought of. I knew I
should have to make my way in life like my ancestors before me, for not
only was my family in no sense a rich one, but I was a second son, who
could only look forward to a second son's portion,--an honourable
distinction, this, and one of which my father and my mother were often
wont to speak.
I had, in a word, all the pride of a second son, a creature devoted to
carving his own way to fame and fortune. I will not say that my parents
wanted to console me for being a second son and for seeing my elder
brother inherit the estate and Sutton the beloved, for that was never
thought of or dreamt of by them, or by me. On the contrary, I was told
in all sincerity, and firmly believe now, as I did then, that though
somebody must keep the flame alight on the family altar, where it was
lighted so long ago, and though this duty fell to the eldest son, I need
not envy him. He was tied. I as a younger son was left free,
untrammelled, the world before me. If I was worthy of my fate, the ball
was at my feet. Such was the policy of younger sons, and so it was
handed on to me.
Again, I was fortunate in being brought up in the country, and not in
London or near some great town;--in being, that is, the inmate of "an
English country-house" in the accepted sense, a place to which a certain
definite way of life pertains, especially when the house is not bought,
but inherited, and is regarded with a peculiar veneration and admiration
by all who live in it.
The love of some old "house in the country" constitutes a family
freemasonry, of which those who have not actually experienced it can
form no conception. It unites those who differ in opinion, in age, in
outlook on life, and in circumstances. It is the password of the heart.
Call a dog-kennel Sutton, and I should love it. How much more so when it
stands beside its sheltering elms and limes, with its terraces looking
to the blue line of Mendip, its battlemented and flower-tufted fortress
wall, and its knightly Tower built for security and defence.
In a word, I had the supreme good-luck to be born the second son of a
Somersetshire squire and to be brought up in a Somersetshire country-
house. If the reader would know what that means to a Somersetshire man,
let him turn to Coryat's _Crudities_ and see what the Elizabethan
tourist says in his Introduction as to the possession of a Manor in the
county aforesaid.
But I must be careful not to give a false impression. Sutton is no
palace in miniature, no grandiose expression of the spacious days of
Elizabeth, no pompous outcome of Vanbrugh's magnificent mind, no piece
of reticent elegance by Adams. Instead, it may well seem to the visiting
stranger little more than a fortuitous concourse of mediaeval,
Elizabethan, Jacobean, and modern atoms, which time and the country
builder, too unlearned to be vulgar, have harmonized into a very
moderate, though admittedly attractive, "country seat," of the smaller
sort.
Just as the house had nothing grand about it, so the life lived in it
was not in the least like that described in the old-fashioned sporting
or Society novel, or in the Christmas Number of an Illustrated Paper or
Magazine. Neither my home nor my family was by any means "typical,"
which so often means very untypical. This is specially true of the
Family. They were not in my time, and, indeed, never have been, persons
"complete with" fox-hounds, racers, cellars of port, mortgages, gaming
or elections debts, obsequious tenantry, and a brutal enforcement of the
Game Laws, varied by the semi-fraudulent enclosure of the poor man's
common. With such rural magnificoes, if they ever existed in that form,
which I greatly doubt, we had nothing in common. Even when reduced to
reasonable limits, the picture will not fit the majority of English
country-houses and country gentlemen.
In the first place, the Stracheys could not afford the type of life
depicted by the novelists and satirists, and, in the second place, they
had not the opportunity. Their eldest sons always had to do something in
the world, and even when in possession of the estate were by no means
inclined to spend their lives as nothing but sportsmen. Certainly my
ancestors never showed any inclination to vegetate, or to live gun in
hand and spaniel at heel, like the squires in the old engravings and
colour-prints.
Here I may say parenthetically that we have the good luck to possess
many old family papers at Sutton. I used to read long and happily in
these as a boy, and early saw the falsehood of the conventional, feudal
view of the English squirearchy. When I worked back to the mediaeval
possessors of Sutton, I could find nothing to satisfy my youthful dreams
of knights in armour doing deeds of prowess, or even of tyranny upon
"the villagers crouching at their feet." Instead, I found, with some
disappointment, I admit, that the very first record in regard to Sutton
was that of a dispute in the law-courts with the local parson--a dispute
which is, of course, perennial in all villages and "quiet places by
rivers or among woods." It is as active now as it was in the twelfth
century.
Whether Sir Walter de Sutton, with half a knight's fee, for that,
apparently, was the proper legal description of the Sutton Court estate,
got the best of the Vicar, or the Vicar of him, does not seem to have
been recorded. Anyway, they went for each other, not with lance in rest,
on the one side, and Holy Water, bell, book, and candle on the other,
but with attorneys, and writs, and motions in arrest of judgment, and
all the formulae which can be seen at work in the Year Books of Edward
II, for that was the date of the Tower, and of the aforesaid Walter de
Sutton.
As I shall show later, when I come to deal with my ancestry, Sutton was
never a "Heartbreak House." In each succeeding generation it held the
place which it held when I was young, and which, Heaven be praised! it
still holds. A small, comfortable, yet dignified manor-house, surrounded
by farmhouses and cottages in which live still just the kind of people
who have lived there throughout the period of legal or of literary
memory--the period described as that to which "the memory of man runneth
not to the contrary."
The village people were poor, but yet not dependent; people not,
perhaps, very enterprising, and yet with a culture of their own; and
people, above all, with natural dignity and good manners shown to those
they like and respect, though often with a conventional set of bad
manners to use, if required, as armour against a rough world. These are
always produced when they are inclined to suspect strangers of regarding
them with patronage, ridicule, or contempt.
At this day I could show a rural labourer living in one of the Sutton
Court cottages, aged eighty-three or so, who lived there when I was a
boy and looked then, to my eyes, almost exactly as he does now. Tall,
distinguished, with not merely good manners but a good manner, and with
real refinement of speech, though a strong Somersetshire accent, Israel
Veal would show nothing of himself to a stranger. Probably he would
speak so little, though quite politely, that he would be put down as
"one of those muddle-headed, stupid yokels with little or no mind," who,
according to the townsman, "moulder" in country villages "till they
become demented."
Yet when, a year ago, I introduced my son to him, though my son was,
till then, unknown to him, he at once talked freely. He had got the
password and knew all was safe and well. He proceeded at once to tell
him what he had often told me--how he had "helped to put Sir Henry" (my
father's uncle, whom he succeeded) "into his coffin." He then went on to
describe how (in 1858) the coffin was carried on men's shoulders the
whole way to Chew Magna to be buried there in the Strachey Chapel. The
event set down in cold print does not sound of very great interest or
importance. It will seem, indeed, at first hearing to partake a little
too much of the countryman of the melodrama, or of the comic papers, who
always talks about funerals and corpses. As a matter of fact, however,
Israel Veal has so little self-consciousness and possesses such a gift
for dignified narration that, told by him, the story, if indeed it can
be called a story, always seems of real significance. There is something
of the air of the prophet about the narrator, though he indulge in no
prophecy. I found myself, indeed, saying to my son, "I am so glad you
have heard that as I used to hear it," quite imagining for the moment
that it was a piece of family lore of high import which was being
sacramentally passed on by the old retainer.
At Sutton, though I was not brought up in a hunting-stable, or amid a
crowd of gamekeepers, and so forth, we had the usual establishment of a
country-gentleman of moderate means in the 'seventies. My mother had a
comfortable, heavy landau, with a pair of quiet horses, still officially
and in bills called "coach-horses." My father had a small brougham of
his own for doing magistrate's work, drawn by a horse believed to be of
a very fiery disposition, and called "Black Bess." I and my brothers had
ponies on whose backs we spent many hours. My father had been an invalid
most of his life, and, owing to a stiff knee, could not ride. But,
though an anxious parent, he wisely realised that an Englishman must if
possible know how to use the back of a horse. Ours was a bad riding
country, owing to the great number of small fields, but we galloped up
and down the roads with a youthful lack of consideration for our horses'
legs. Curiously enough, there were no hounds near us, and therefore I
never actually rode to hounds till I was forty. Happily, however, I was
familiar with the saddle, and, though an exceedingly careless rider, had
not, even after nearly twenty years' intermission of riding, to re-learn
my grip.
Even now, to get on a horse and ride through woods and lanes and over
Downs and Commons is an enormous pleasure, and if a mild jump or two can
be added I am transported into the Seventh Heaven. To me the greatest of
all physical enjoyments has always been the sensation produced by a
horse with all four legs off the ground.
There was another aspect of the country-house, which I am sure was not
without its effect. My father, though he knew little or nothing about
agriculture, was to a great extent his own agent, and therefore the
farmers and the cottage tenants were constantly coming to the house to
consult him and to talk over small matters. There also came to him
pretty frequently people on police and magistrate's business, to get
warrants signed, so that the offenders could be legally held till
brought before the Petty Sessions. At these interviews, whether
economic, administrative, or constabulary, I and my brothers were
permitted to attend. While my father sat at his table in what was called
"the magistrate's room," or "Sir Edward's business room," and the other
persons of the drama either sat opposite him, if they were merely on
business, or stood if they were accompanied by a policeman, we children
sat discreetly on a sofa on my father's side of the room and listened
with all our ears.
It was always interesting and curious, and occasionally we had a real
piece of dramatic "fat," in the shape of charges of witchcraft. Assaults
or threatening language "likely to cause breaches of the Peace" were
also regarded as highly diverting. Charges of witchcraft were usually
levelled by one old lady against another. One might hear accounts of how
intrepid men and women nailed down the footsteps of the witch, of how
deadly-nightshade was grown over the porch of a cottage to keep off
witches, and how evil spirits in the shape of squeaking chickens
frequented the woman who was "overlooked." My father did his best to
make peace and subdue superstition, but it was quite easy to see that
his audiences, especially when they were women, regarded him as a victim
of ignorance. "Poor gentleman, he don't understand a word about it."
That was their attitude.
Lastly, my country home had what so many English country-houses have, a
largish library. The hoary tradition that English squires are as a class
illiterate, which they are not even when inordinately given to sport,
has no foundation. In the Great Parlour, for so it was called, there
were plenty of good books, and I was early turned loose among them. My
father would have thought it a crime to keep books from a boy on the
plea that he might injure the bindings or lose the volumes or get harm
from unlicensed reading. I did exactly what I liked in the library and
browsed about with a splendid incoherence which would have shocked a
pedant, but delighted a true man of letters. Now I would open the folio
edition of Ben Jonson, now Congreve's plays and poems printed by
Baskerville; now a volume of "Counsel's Brief delivered in the defence
of Warren Hastings Esqre. at his impeachment," which we happened to
possess; now _Travels to the Court of Ashanti_; now _Chinese
Punishments_; now Flaxman's Illustrations to the _Iliad_, the
_Odyssey_, or _Dante_.
Those were glorious days, for one had real leisure. One varied the
turning over of books in the Great Parlour with a scamper on one's pony,
with visits to the strawberry bed, and with stretching oneself full-
length on a sofa, or the hearth-rug in the Hall, reading four or five
books at a time. In such an atmosphere it was easy to forget one's
proper lessons and the abhorred dexterity of Greek and Latin
grammarians.
If the physical "aura" of Sutton Court was delightful and stimulating to
mind and body, still more stimulating and of still happier chance was
the mental atmosphere. I may class myself as thrice-blessed in being
brought up in Whig ideas, in a Whig family, with Whig traditions, for in
spite of the stones, intellectual and political, that have been thrown
at them, salvation is of the Whigs. When I speak thus of the Whigs I do
not, of course, mean Whiggism of the Whig aristocracy as represented by
modern Tory historians, or by the parasitic sycophants of a militant
Proletariat. I mean true Whig principles--the principles of Halifax, of
Somers, of Locke, of Addison, and of Steele--the principles of the Bill
of Rights and of "the Glorious Revolution of 1688";--the Whiggism which
had its origin in the party of Cromwell and of the Independents, of John
Milton and of Richard Baxter, the party which even in its decadence
flowered in England in Chatham and William Pitt, and in America in
Washington, John Adams, and the founders of the Republic. Whig
principles to me mean that the will of the majority of the nation as a
whole must prevail, and not the will of any section, even if it is a
large section and does manual work. These are the principles which are
in deadly opposition to Jacobinism and Bolshevism. Under Jacobinism and
Bolshevism, as their inventors proclaim, true policy must be made to
prevail by force, or fraud, if necessary. Privilege is claimed for the
minority. Oligarchy, and a very militant form of oligarchy, thus takes
the place of true democracy.
But though the will of the people, be it what it may be, must prevail,
the Whig claims absolute liberty in all matters of personal opinion and
of conscience, and advocates the greatest amount of liberty procurable
in social action. He will not sanction direct action in order to secure
even these things, but he asserts the right of free speech in order to
convert the majority, when it needs converting, to his views, and will
not rest till he obtains it. Never persecute a man for his opinions as
long as he does not proceed to lawless action. Maintain freedom against
a lawless crowd as steadfastly as against a lawless crown. Never refuse
a man an impartial hearing, and never judge a man guilty till he has
been proved so. These are the true Whig principles, and in these I was
brought up.
It is true that my father, yielding not unnaturally to the fashion of
his day,--the fashion of decrying the Whigs--would always call himself
a Liberal rather than a Whig, and, indeed, Whiggism in his youth was
often little better than a specially bad type of Toryism. As soon,
however, as I began to study history in any detail, that is not in
handbooks, but in the originals, I soon saw that he was one of the best
of Whigs, whether in matters of State or Church. Moderation, justice,
freedom, sympathy with suffering, tolerance, yielded not in the form of
patronage but in obedience to a claim of right which could not be
gainsaid--these were the pillars of his mind.
Who will deny that it was good fortune to be brought up in these views
and by such an expounder? As I looked at the pictures that hung on the
walls in the Great Hall (not very great, in fact, though bearing that
name), I remembered with a glow of pride that it was on these principles
that my family had been nourished. William Strachey, the first Secretary
to the Colony of Virginia, would, I felt, have been a true Whig if Whig
principles had been enunciated in his time, for the Virginia Company was
a Liberal movement. John Strachey, his son, stood at the very cradle of
Whiggism, for was he not the intimate friend of John Locke? Locke in his
letters from exile and in his formative period writes to Strachey with
affection and admiration.
To my glowing imagination John Strachey thus became the unknown inspirer
of Locke, and therefore, perhaps, the inspirer and founder of the Whig
philosophy. The son of Locke's friend, though the West Country was, as a
rule, hopelessly Tory and full of Squire Westerns, stood firm by William
and Mary and George I. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, the second John
Strachey must have been a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, the mighty Whig of
Science.
There were also Cromwellian ancestors on the distaff side. Indeed,
though once more not in the ordinary conventional sense, the aura of
Sutton was a Whig aura.
Though the aura of Sutton Court had a strong effect upon me morally and
intellectually, the emotional side of me was even more deeply touched.
The beauty and fascination of the house, its walls, its trees, and its
memories, made, as I have already said, so deep an impression upon me
that to this hour I love the place, the thought of it, and even the very
name of it, as I love no other material thing. By nature I am not among
those who become permanently attached to objects. It is true that I love
my own home in Surrey, a house which I built, as it were, with my own
hands. I love the scenery; I love it also as the place where my wife and
I went as young people, and as the place where my children were born,
but the thought of it does not touch me emotionally as does the thought
of Sutton. What I have felt about Sutton all my life, I shall feel till
I feel no more on earth. But that will not be all. I am convinced that I
shall in some sense or other feel it in some other place. The indent on
my soul will not be effaced.
I have touched on some of the chief things, natal and prenatal, which
went to the making of my mind before I began to shape that mind for
myself. Every man must do this, for whatever be the stars in his
horoscope or the good fairies who preside over his cradle, they can only
give, as it were, "useful instructions" and a good plan of the route.
They leave him also plenty of opportunities for muddling those
instructions and plunging into every kind of folly that they showed him
how to avoid. In the last resort, a man is his own star and must make
his own soul, though, of course, he has a right, nay, a duty, to give
thanks for all good chances and happy circumstances. At any rate, I must
now approach the time at which I took control of myself, and of the
magic boat that had been built and equipped for me by others. Had I been
fully conscious when I started on my own voyage, it should have been
with a devout gratitude that my ship, at any rate, had not been rigged
in the eclipse, and that I set sail under so bright a sky and with so
prosperous a gale behind me.
CHAPTER IV
MY FATHER
I delay too long the picture of my father. Perhaps unconsciously I have
been trying to avoid describing him, for I know the difficulty of the
task and dread producing something unworthy. Important as were our home
and traditions, our family, our friends, and our mode of life, they are
as nothing in my making when compared to the influence of such a man as
he was.
I shall not attempt to describe my father's physical appearance, for
that has been done with sympathy, felicity, and power of presentation in
my brother's portrait here reproduced. I will say only that he was
slight of build and short of stature. He is standing in the little Great
Hall at Sutton, in his black overcoat and hat, ready for one of those
walks on the terrace which he took from his earliest childhood. He was
born in the old house in 1812. It was not, however, till the year 1819
that he first came to live at Sutton. His earliest recollection was, as
he used to tell us, playing on the terrace with the great ginger-
coloured tom-cat, "King George." We always supposed this feline
magnifico to have derived from some stock imported by the first Sir
Henry when he was Master of the Household to George III. As my readers
will see, King George's successor, in the true "mode" of his race, sits
in a purely detached manner in the middle of the polished oak floor
near, but in no special relation to his master, or rather, dependent,
for no cat has a master though many have dependents.
But unstinted, unconditional eulogy is bound to end in flattery, and my
father was much too good a man and too simple a man to be exposed to
even the hint of such a taint. Though he would take sincere praise and
sympathy with the pleasure of a wholly unaffected nature, the best
courtier in the world would have found it impossible to flatter him.
I shall, therefore, be particular to draw clearly such faults as he had.
Also I shall tell them first, though I know they will have a tendency to
change into eulogy as I proceed. In truth, his faults, such as they
were, endeared him only the more to people who understood him.
He did not always show complete equity in judgment, though I admit, and
I think the majority of mankind would admit, that there was something
essentially noble, if unpractical, in the way in which this want of
equity was shown. So tender was his heart, so passionate his hatred of
cruelty, so profound his chivalry, that he was apt to have his
intellectual balance unduly affected by any tale of suffering inflicted
by the strong on the weak, or by any accusation of wrong done to women
or to children. When he heard such a tale he was too little inclined to
show the worldly wisdom of the man who says, "Let us wait and hear all
the facts. It may be a mere cock-and-bull story."
Instead, his attitude always reminded me of that of some eager knight-
errant, on fire to accomplish his duty and to succour helpless damsels
and all persons in distress. He always assumed that a call for succour
came from a deserving object, if only it was agonising enough. He would
post off, as it were, lance in rest and vizor down, upon the slightest
rumour of wrong or cruelty. No woman suffering, or alleged to be
suffering, from the cruelty of a husband, would ever call for his
sympathy in vain. It was, however, cases of cruelty to little children
that most tended to overwhelm his judgment. His burning horror at the
mere idea of such deeds knew no bounds. A wife might to some extent be
able to protect herself from the brutalities of her husband, but what
chance had a helpless, friendless, terrified child, incapable even of
running away from its tormentors, or of making an appeal for protection
to outsiders? Those who have lived on unkindness and terror ever since
they became conscious, cannot even console their poor little hearts with
imaginary visions of happiness.
[Illustration: Sir Edward Strachey in the Hall at Sutton Court with his
Favourite Cat. (From a picture by his son, Henry Strachey.)]
The unhappiness of a tortured child is a thing not to be thought of. It
scorches the mind like a blast of sulphur.
Not only as a magistrate was my father's voice always raised on the side
of the women and children. He would always listen to any mother who came
to protest against the cruelty of the village schoolmistress to her
offspring. The cruelty of the teacher was almost as unendurable to him
as that of a bad father or husband. He would not hear of any
justification for rapping school-children over the knuckles with a
ruler. If one ventured to say that there were such things as demon-
children and that they had a power to probe and prod even the best of
good people into a kind of frenzy in which they were hardly accountable
for their acts, the plea roused his deepest indignation. Indeed, it was
only at some sort of suggestion like this that I ever saw my father
really angry. Then, and only then, he would flare up and reply that this
was the sort of excuse that people always made to cover cruelty,
wickedness, and injustice. Grown-up people were much too ready to invent
plausible grounds for the oppression of children. "Serve you right," was
never heard to fall from his lips by any child.
That he was justified in the general, if not in the particular, case, I
fully realise. Indeed, I and all his children, I think, look back now
with the sense that even if we sometimes criticised him (I admit, only
very slightly) on this point, we were and remain proud that he was
_splendide in-judex_.
Let no one suppose that because my father was a saint, as undoubtedly he
was, his general attitude towards life was of the priggish or
puritanical kind. It was nothing of the sort. Was not one of his
favourite characters in Shakespeare the immortal Mrs. Quickly?
He was a very fastidious and reticent man in matters of the spirit,
unless you approached him definitely and in earnest on a particular
point. Then he would talk freely, and showed a marked liberality of
soul. A courtly eighteenth century divine, though probably nobody would
in reality have had less in common with my father, might have described
him as "a thoroughly well-bred man in matters of religion." In spite of
the fact that he was brought up amongst the Evangelicals and understood
them and shared their better side, nothing, I feel sure, disgusted him
more than their way of living in their spiritual shirtsleeves.
I can imagine his horror at the habit of the Clapham sect of "engaging"
(_i.e._, engaging in prayer), in season and out of season. "Shall
we engage?" the Evangelical Pietist, whether a clergyman or a layman,
would say at the end of some buttered-toast-and-pound-cake tea-party,
and then everyone would be expected to flop down on their knees and
listen to an extemporary appeal to their Maker!
My father was full of stories of the men of his own time and of the men
of former times, of historical allusions and analogies. He abounded in
pregnant sayings culled from English, from Greek and Latin, and also
from Persian, for he had learned the French of the East when he was at
Haileybury studying for the Civil Service of the Honourable East India
Company. Also he was fairly well-read in some branches of French
literature and knew enough Italian to translate a quotation from Dante
or from Tasso. He was also deeply read and deeply interested in Biblical
criticism and in the statecraft of the Old Testament. His book on
"Hebrew Politics" was hailed by theological students of liberal views as
a real contribution to Biblical exegesis.
This all sounds like the record of a scholar. Yet he was not a scholar
but a man with a most active and creative interest in his own world and
his own time. Politics was his master-passion in things secular, and he
followed every turn of the political wheel, not merely with the interest
of a spectator, but with that of a man whose heart and mind were both
deeply concerned. He was a Party Liberal, and also a liberal in the very
best sense, and full of the most earnest zeal for the people's cause. My
only quarrel with him here--if it was a quarrel--was that in his anxiety
to support what he believed to be the cause of the people he was in
effect anti-democratic.
On this point I was wont to chaff him, for there was no man with whom
you could more easily argue without hurting his feelings. I would put it
like this:
You think of the people and your duty to them in too much of a _grand
seigneur_ manner for me. You seem to want to find out what they want,
and then do it, whether it is right or wrong, out of a patronising sense
of moral benevolence. I, on the other hand, am a true democrat because I
regard myself as one of the people--a creature with just as many rights
as they have. Their opinion, if it is the opinion of the majority, will
of course prevail, and ought to prevail, and I shall loyally acquiesce
in it. But I am not going to do what I think unwise, as you appear to
think I should, because somebody has put a ticket on the back of a
certain view and declared it to be the popular view. It may quite well
turn out that the alleged popular view is not popular at all, but is
scouted by the majority.
That, of course, was, and was meant to be, a parody of his attitude, but
it was one which he never resented, though he would not admit its
nearness to the truth.
I shall not give the supreme characteristic impression of the man if I
do not tell something about his stories, and give some specimens of his
table-talk, especially as I have felt very strongly, though it may be
difficult to transfer the impression, that his general talk, quite apart
from his example and direct teaching, had a potent influence upon my
character, and so upon my life.
To begin with, he was an ideal talker to children and young people,
because, besides leisure, he had an innate kindliness and sympathy with
the young which made him always anxious to put himself and his mind and
heart at their disposal. He was in a perpetual mood to answer any
questions, however tiresome and however often repeated. As he was a man
of wide reading, of good memory, and almost an expert in many kinds of
knowledge, we as children had something of that incomparable advantage
for which I have always envied royalty. They are able to learn by the
simple process of talking to people who know. That is not only the
easiest road to knowledge, but if your teacher is no charlatan a more
vivid impression is made upon the mind than is made by books.
If you went to my father and asked him who Aurungzebe was, or Hereward
the Wake, or Masaniello, or Edward Keen, or Callimachus, or Titus Oates,
or Dr. Chalmers, or Saint Januarius, he would tell you at once something
vivid and stimulating about each of them, something which remained in
your mind. Often his answer would lead to other fascinating and
delightful discoveries for the questioner. I will take a couple of
examples at random. When I asked him about Masaniello, he not only told
the story of the insurrection among the _lazzaroni_ at Naples, but
he launched out into accounts of his own experience of Naples in the
'forties and of the crowds of picturesque and starving beggars and
banditti who in those days still infested the city and its horrible and
putrescent lanes and alleys. The Naples of the Bombas, in which he had
spent two or more winters, was always a delightful source of anecdote. I
could fill a book with his talk about Neapolitan nobles who let two
apartments in their Palaces with only one set of furniture, and of the
Neapolitan boatmen who formed the crew of the boat which he kept in the
Bay, for he was too great an invalid to walk. Especially did we love to
hear of how he was carried up Mount Vesuvius in a "litter"--a word which
he always used. It thrilled me. It seemed to make the whole scene Roman
and magnificent. One thought of Pliny going to observe the great
eruption, of Cicero, of Pompey, of Seneca, carried down to Baiæ in their
curtained chairs. My other example is Callimachus, the Greek, or rather,
Alexandrine poet of the Decadence. The mention of his name brought in
its train an excellent story derived from my father's uncle, the second
Sir Henry Strachey, the squire whom he succeeded at Sutton. The story
runs as follows. When the said great-uncle, as a boy just come out to
India, went to dine with the great Orientalist, Sir William Jones, in
his house in Calcutta (_circa_ 1793), Sir William quoted to him a
couple of lines out of Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo, which he had hurled
at the head of Burke when the great Whig tribune threatened that he
would get him (Sir William Jones) recalled if he continued to support
Warren Hastings. The lines quoted from the obscure Greek poet he
translated to the young civilian, Henry Strachey. "In reply, I reminded
Burke," he said, "of the lines in the Hymn to Apollo: '_The Euphrates
is a noble river, but it rolls down all the dead dogs of Babylon to the
sea._'"
My father was wont to point out that, as a matter of fact, Jones's
memory was not quite accurate. If you look at the Burke correspondence,
you will see the dignified letter in which Jones replied to Burke. In it
he makes no direct reference to the orator's threat, and only uses the
first line of Callimachus, which he turns into a compliment. He is sure,
he declares, that the mighty torrent of Burke's eloquence will always be
used in the defence of a friend. Perhaps he thought that, if Burke
looked up the passage, he would be snubbed as it were automatically.
When, however, Jones told the story twelve years afterwards he did what
we are all inclined to do in such circumstances. He imagined himself
much more valiant and much more ready to take a great man by the scruff
of his neck and shake him, than he really was. We are all heroes in our
memories. By the way, it was Callimachus who wrote the epigram on the
death of Heraclitus which was made immortal by the translation of the
author of "Ionica." It is, I hold, the best poetic translation in the
English tongue.
Of the distinguished people with whom my father was personally
acquainted in his earlier days, among the most memorable were Carlyle
and Edward Irving. Carlyle was tutor to my father's first cousin,
Charles Buller, later to be known as "the young Marcellus of the Whig
Party." Of Carlyle he had many stories. Curiously enough, I might have
seen Carlyle myself, for when I was about fifteen or sixteen he was
still alive, and my father offered to take me to see him in Chelsea.
With the cheery insolence of youth, I weighed the question in the
balance and decided that I did not want to trouble myself with the
generation that was passing away. I can still remember, however, that
what almost moved me to accept my father's proposal was the fact that
Carlyle was actually born in the 18th century, and before Keats. Edward
Irving had made a vivid impression upon my father, though he only saw
him, I believe, at the age of seven or eight. He could distinctly
remember Irving taking him upon his knee, holding him at arm's length,
looking into his face, and saying, in his deep, vibrant orator's voice:
"Edward, don't ye long to be a mon?" Evidently the impression made upon
my father by the words, or rather the way in which they were spoken, was
profound. The incident always reminded me of that wonderful story told
by Crabbe Robinson the Diarist. As a young man, Crabbe Robinson went to
see one of the trials in which Erskine was engaged as Counsel. All he
could remember of the speech was Erskine leaning over the jury-box and
in low tones, full of meaning and tremulous with passion, uttering the
commonplace words: "Gentlemen of the Jury, if you give a verdict against
my client I shall leave this court a miserable man!" So profound was the
influence of the orator that Crabbe Robinson tells us that for weeks
afterwards he used to wake with a start in the middle of the night,
saying over to himself the words: "I shall leave this court a miserable
man."
Another contemporary well known to my father was Peacock, the novelist,
for Peacock was also an official in the India House and so a colleague
of my grandfather, Edward Strachey.
Of my father's religious views, though they deeply affected my own, I
shall speak only very shortly. He was, above all, a devout man. Pure in
heart, he earned the promised blessing and saw God throughout his days
on earth. The fatherhood of God and the imminence of the Kingdom of
Heaven were no empty words for him. But, though he was so single-minded
a follower of Christ and His teachings, he was no Pharisee of the New
Dispensation; the sacerdotalism of the Christian Churches was as hateful
to him as the sacerdotalism of the Jews was to Christ. He was concerned
with the living spirit, not with ritual, or formularies, or doctrinal
shibboleths. His mind was open to all that was true, good, and generous.
He asked for free and full development of the soul of man. "The cry of
Ajax was for light," was one of his best-loved quotations.
He welcomed the researches of scholarship in the foundations of
religion, as he did of science in the material world, and of philosophy
in the things of the mind. Though he loved to worship with his fellows,
and was a sincere member of the Church of England, the maxim _nulla
solus extra ecclesiasm_ filled him with horror. It was the worst of
blasphemies.
His teacher was Frederick Maurice, but in certain ways he went further
than that noble-hearted, if somewhat mystical, divine. It would have
been an absurdity to ask my father whether it would not be better to
give up Christianity and try instead the faith of Christ. That was
always his faith. For him religion meant a way of life, a spiritual
exaltation--not going to church, or saying prayers, or being sedulous in
certain prescribed devotions. His creed was a communion with, and a
trust in, God, through Christ. Above all, he had an overmastering sense
of duty.
He was sensitive in body and mind to a high degree, and so may have
seemed to himself and other observers to be like Mr. Fearing in Banyan's
Dream. But I remember that when Mr. Fearing came to the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, no man was happier or braver. The river had never been
so low as when he crossed it. The Shining Ones had never made an easier
passage for a pilgrim. So it was with my father. He had all his life
dreaded the physical side of dissolution. Yet, when Death came he was
wholly calm and untroubled. It is designedly that I do not say he was
resigned. Resignation implies regret. He had none.
I do not think I can more fitly sum up the impression made by my father
than by quoting the epigram of Martial on "Felix Antonius."
To-day, my friend is seventy-five;
He tells his tale with no regret;
His brave old eyes are steadfast yet,
His heart the lightest heart alive.
He sees behind him green and wide
The pathway of his pilgrim years;
He sees the shore and dreadless hears
The whisper of the creeping tide.
For out of all his days, not one
Has passed and left its unlaid ghost
To seek a light for ever lost,
Or wail a deed for ever done.
So for reward of life-long truth
He lives again, as good men can,
Redoubling his allotted span
With memories of a stainless youth.
The version I have taken is that by Sir Henry Newbolt, and undoubtedly
it is one of the best examples extant of the transference of the spirit
of a Latin poem into English. My readers, however, will no doubt
remember that this epigram was also translated into English by Pope.
Though the modern poet's version is to be preferred, the older
translation contains one of the most felicitous lines written even by
Pope.
It is needless to say that I realise the essential inappropriateness of
joining my father's name with that of Martial. It is, indeed, a capital
example of the irony of circumstance that I am able to do so. But, after
all, why should we be annoyed instead of being thankful, when bright
flowers spring up on a dunghill? Certainly, my father would not have
felt any indignity. He was the least superstitious and also the least
sophistical of men. If a thing was worthy in itself he would never call
it common or unclean on a punctilio.
If, while dealing with my father's influence on my life, I were not to
say something about the influence of my mother, I should leave a very
false impression. My mother was a woman of a quick intelligence and of a
specially attractive personality. To her we children owed a great deal
in the matter of manners. My father gave us an excellent example in
behaviour and in that gentleness, unselfishness, and sincerity which is
the foundation of good breeding. My mother, who was never shy, and very
good at mental diagnosis, added that burnish without which good manners
often lose half their power. What she particularly insisted on was the
practice of that graciousness of which she herself afforded so admirable
an example. Naturally, like a good mother, she always reproved us for
bad manners, or for being unkind to other children, or selfish, or
affected, or oafish, or sulky. Her direst thunders, however, were kept
for anything which approached ill-breeding. Giving ourselves airs, or
"posing," or any other form of juvenile vulgarity, were well-nigh
unforgivable sins.
But she did not content herself with inculcating the positive side of
good manners. She was equally strong on the negative side. For example,
if there was a party of farm tenants, or cottagers, a school-feast, or
anything of the kind, both when we were small and half grown-up, she
insisted that we must never dream of keeping in a corner by ourselves.
We must go and do our duty in entertaining our guests. No excuses of
shyness or not liking to talk to people one didn't know, or suggestions
that they would think us putting on side if we went up to them, were
allowed for a moment. The injunctions we received were that, at a party
in our own house, we must never think of our own pleasure or enjoyment,
but must devote ourselves wholly and solely to the pleasure of our
guests. The sight of anyone sitting moping in a corner and looking bored
or unhappy was the destruction of a party. Such persons, if seen, must
be pounced upon at once, amused, and made much of, till they were
perfectly happy, as "the guests who got more attention than anybody
else." In a word, we were taught that the strength of the social chain
is its weakest link. It was quite safe to leave the big people, or the
big people's children, to look after themselves. The people to be made
much of and treated like royalty were those who looked uncomfortable or
seemed to feel out of it. The result was that my mother's parties were
never a failure. Though her ill-health never allowed her to be a hostess
on a big scale, her parties, whether in Somersetshire or at Cannes, were
always voted delightful. Everyone, from Somersetshire farmer or
clergyman, to the notables of a Riviera winter resort, owned her social
charm. As an example of it, I remember how one winter, which we spent at
Bournemouth, for my mother's health, the invalid's drawing-room became
at once the centre of a memorable little society, consisting, as far as
I remember, of people whom we had never known before. There was a
delightful old Mr. Marshall, of the Marshalls of the Lakes, who used to
come and play whist with her, and with whom we boys sometimes rode.
Though he was about eighty, he kept up his riding and liked to have a
boy to ride with him. Another old gentleman, attractive in his manner,
in his dress, and in his kindly, old-fashioned dignity, was Lord
Suffolk. He dressed like "the Squire" in the old _Punches_. He wore
a low-crowned, broadish-brimmed hat, Bedford cord breeches and gaiters,
and a light-brown or buff cloth coat and waistcoat. He had two invalid
daughters, and these, if I remember rightly, were the cause of the
family having a villa at Bournemouth.
It was, however, either at the house-parties at Chewton or at Strawberry
Hill, which were hardly considered complete by Lady Waldegrave without
my mother, or else again at Cannes in her own villa that she made her
main impression upon people of the greater world. Though of good parts,
she was not in any sense intellectual. I never heard her attempt to say
brilliant things or epigrammatic things, or to talk about books or
historic people.
She was, like so many charming women, perfectly natural and perfectly at
her ease, and full of receptive interest. When she talked it was always
to draw out her interlocutor and never to show off her own cleverness.
She was quite as popular, indeed I had almost said more popular, with
women as with men, and had as great a fascination for young people as
for old. I remember well our pleasure in being told of a letter written
by one of the big London hostesses who had come out to Cannes, made my
mother's acquaintance, and fallen a charm to her winning voice, her warm
regard, and her gracious eyes. She had written to a friend, saying, in
effect,
What on earth did you mean by not telling me more about your cousin,
Lady Strachey? She turns out to be one of the most delightful people I
have ever met, and yet you never breathed a word about her. Why did you
want to keep her to yourself? Through your selfishness I have missed
three or four weeks of her.
It is notoriously difficult to describe charm, and I shall make no
attempt, except to say that my mother's spell did not consist in good
looks in the ordinary sense of the word. She had a witching expression,
an exceedingly graceful carriage of her head and body, and a good
figure; but her face was so mobile and so entirely governed by her smile
that photographs and pictures were always pronounced as "impossible" and
"utterly unlike."
Though she was in no sense nervous, the attempt to sit for her picture
seemed at once to break the spell and destroy that "_beau regard_"
which was, I feel sure, the secret of the pleasure she spread around
her. No doubt she took trouble to please, but she had the art of
concealing her art. No one ever criticised her as "theatrical" or
"artificial."
Her children fully felt her charm. Looking back, I can now see that she,
most wisely, took as much trouble to fascinate us as she did the rest of
the world. She would not mind this remark, for she was no naturalist,
but held that you ought to take as much trouble to be polite and to give
pleasure to your nearest and dearest as to strangers. Anyway, we were
never allowed to be rude or careless to her, or to anybody else merely
because they were well-loved relations. We never failed to get up from
our chairs when she entered the room, or to open doors for her, or to
show her any other physical form of politeness. But she did not
inculcate this by anything approaching harshness, or by a sharp tongue.
All she did was to make us feel that we were uncouth bores, to be pitied
rather than condemned, if we failed in the minor politenesses.
No doubt she was assisted here by the fact of being an invalid, and also
by the good example which my father set us. He was one of the best-bred
of men as well as one of the noblest and most simple-hearted. I shall
never forget the patient courtesy with which he would treat some old
village woman who was positively storming at him in regard to alleged
grievances. His politeness, however, never had in it any studied
element. Nobody could ever have said that he was overdoing it. Again,
there was no inverted snobbishness about him. He was quite as polite to
a great lady as to a cottager's wife.
I will undertake to say that in his whole life he had never shown off--a
thing which could be said of very few men, but which, after all, is the
secret of all good breeding.
But to return to my mother. She also never showed off, though with her
the art of pleasing and being pleased was very carefully studied. She
inherited this quality from her father, Dr. Symonds. She also found in
him her example for the exact conduct of the social code. I remember her
saying that, though her father was a very hard-worked doctor, and often
had to take meals quickly and at odd times, he made it an absolute rule,
no matter how busy he was, never to get into a rush, or be fussed, or do
things in a huggermugger way. If he came in late and tired, he would eat
his dinner as quietly and decorously as if he had got several hours
before him. Everything had to be done decently and in order. He would
not dream of getting up from his chair if he wanted an extra spoon or
fork in a hurry, but would either send one of his children to get it for
him or else ring the bell for the butler.
This was not an attempt at grandeur, but due to a feeling that if he
once got into chaotic ways he would go to pieces. Probably he felt the
necessity all the more from the fact that he was a widower and might the
more easily have dropped into untidy and slovenly household ways.
I have no time to dwell on my mother's most intimate friendship with
Lady Waldegrave and with their habit of writing daily letters to each
other, and of the social and political life which my mother shared with
her friend as well as her health would permit. For my present purposes,
what matters, though it sounds abominably egotistical to say so, is the
effect of my mother upon my character and life. Unquestionably the fact
of her being an invalid was a great lesson. In the first place, it did a
great deal to educate her children to be unselfish. It was a rule of the
house that everything was to be sacrificed to my mother's comfort, for
she was often not only in great pain but dangerously ill. My father was,
in any case, the most unselfish of men, but we might have regarded that,
as children often will, as a kind of personal quality of his own, like a
lame knee, or a dislike of draughts, or a fondness for cold mutton, or
other simple forms of living. When we saw his daily and hourly sacrifice
of himself to my mother and that tenderness of heart which never failed
him, we must have been made of rock or oak not to be inspired by an
example so noble and fraught with so magnificent a pathos. We showed
badly in comparison with our father, but still we had him always before
us, and if we were ever tempted to exhibit selfishness or want of
consideration to my mother, his devotion was a standing, though never an
open, rebuke, and brought the bitterest remorse.
My mother maintained the true dignity of the sickroom. She never
complained either of the hard fate which chained one who loved the world
and its amusements so much to her bed, nor, again, did she ever cherish
or show the slightest grievance if we had seemed unkind or had not done
what she would have liked us to do. It is needless to say that the
effect of this was exactly what she would have desired, though not
admitted even to herself, for she was not a person at all self-conscious
or self-analytical in these matters.
The fact remains that people who are brought up in a house with an
invalid, where that invalid has the love, respect, and devotion of the
head of the home, get a valuable lesson. There is more than that. The
sight of pain and suffering and the imminence of sorrow and danger, if
it be not too terrifying, is good for children. It makes them early
acquainted with the realities of life and its essential sternness. Then,
when death or sorrow makes its inevitable descent, the child is prepared
to meet it, or knows, at any rate, the spirit in which it ought to be
met. Those who have never seen Death or heard the swing of his scythe,
till he suddenly bursts upon them, or upon those they love dearly, are
greatly to be pitied. They have not learnt the art of quietening the
soul in face of an inexorable command.
_Timor mortis_ is a reality, and we can be, and ought to be,
prepared for it. The sick-room, if children are made to understand its
significance in a wise and kindly spirit, and through the conduct of
such people as my father and my mother, is a teacher of no mean order.
CHAPTER V
MY FATHER'S STORIES OF THE STRACHEY FAMILY
Delightful as were my father's literary and historical stories and
observations, already described, I liked them best when they dealt with
our own family and its traditions. My father, though without a trace of
anything approaching pride of birth, knew his own family history well,
and was never tired of relating stories of "famous men and our fathers
that begat us." As a great Shakespearian devotee, he specially delighted
to tell us of our direct ancestor, William Strachey, "the friend of Ben
Jonson," for so we knew him.
The said ancestor married the Widow Baber, niece of a famous seafarer,
Sir Richard Cross, who commanded the _Bonaventura_ at the Siege of
Cadiz, and so brought Sutton into the family. This William Strachey
almost certainly knew Shakespeare. It is now generally admitted that the
storm in _The Tempest_ was based upon Strachey's account of the
shipwreck of Sir George Somers's fleet on the Bermudas--the Isle of
Devils so greatly dreaded by seamen. They provided in this case,
however, a haven of refuge. Strachey was first Secretary to the Colony
of Virginia. Thus we have an ancestor who gives us the right, as a
distinguished American scholar once said to me, to consider ourselves
"Founders' kin to the United States"--a piece of family pride which no
man can deem snobbish or ridiculous.
William Strachey wrote a very remarkable letter describing the
shipwreck, or rather tempest. The letter was addressed to the Lady
Willoughby de Broke of that day, a woman of ability and greatly
interested in the Virginia Company, as were all the liberal spirits of
the age, including Elizabeth herself. This letter was handed about in
manuscript, as was so often the case in those times, and Shakespeare, in
all human probability, must have seen it, detected good copy for the
theatre--he had a never-failing instinct in that direction--and used it
for his famous last play. Shakespeare must have met and talked with
Strachey on his return from America, for recent investigations have
shown that Shakespeare had many communications with the men who founded
the Virginia Company, and was very likely a member.
Here I may interpose that I have always been specially interested in the
fact that in the letter to Lady Willoughby de Broke, Strachey notes a
circumstance that was often observed in the war. He tells us that the
young gallants, when every hand was required to work at the pumps, had
to exert themselves to the very utmost, and to work as long and as hard
as the professional seamen. To the astonishment of himself and everyone
else, they were able to do as much work and to keep at it as strenuously
as the old mariners.
Another reason for feeling pretty sure that William Strachey must have
known Shakespeare is the fact, of which we have ample proof, that
Strachey was well known to the men of letters of the day. To begin with,
he was a friend of Ben Jonson and wrote a set of commendatory verses for
the Laureate's "Sejanus." These appear in the folio edition of Jonson's
works. Probably this sonnet--it has fourteen lines--is one of the most
cryptic things in the whole of Elizabethan literature. No member of our
family or any other family has ever been able to construe it. Yet it is
a pleasure to me to gather from the concluding couplet that the author
had sound Whig principles:
If men would shun swol'n Fortune's ruinous blasts,
Let them use temperance; nothing violent lasts.
[Illustration: John Strachey, the Friend of Locke.]
An even more interesting proof of William Strachey's literary
connections is to be found in the fact that when he, Strachey, went to
Venice he took with him a letter of introduction from the poet, Dr.
Donne, to the then Ambassador with the Republic, Sir Henry Wotton, also
a poet. The letter is witty and trenchant. After noting that Strachey
was "sometime secretary to Sir Thomas Gates," he adds, "I do boldly say
that the greatest folly he ever committed was to submit himself and
parts to so mean a master." The rest of the letter is pleasantly
complimentary and shows that Donne and Strachey were fast friends.
This William Strachey, as my father used to point out to us, had a very
considerable amount of book-writing to his credit. There were two or
three pamphlets written by him and published as what we should now call
Virginia Company propaganda. One of these gives a very delightful
example of the English and American habit of applying a "get-
civilisation-quick" system for the native inhabitants of any country
into which they penetrate. Strachey's book, which was reprinted by the
Hakluyt Society, was entitled "Articles, Lawes and Orders, Divine,
Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony of Virginia," and was printed in
1610.
One of these pamphlets was sold at auction in London just before the
war, and went--very naturally and, in a sense, very properly--to
America. The volume in question contained, besides the ordinary letter-
press, several poems by William Strachey and an autograph inscription
written in the most wonderfully neat and clear handwriting--a standard
in handwriting to which no member of the family before or since has ever
attained. But besides the handwriting the dedication has other claims on
our attention. It is charmingly worded. It shows, amongst other things,
how natural was the cryptic dedication to the Shakespeare Sonnets. It
runs as follows:
To his right truly honoured, and
best beloved friend, sometymes
a Personall Confederat and
Adventurer, and now a
sincere and holy Beadsman
for this Christian prose-
cutiõ Thomas Lawson, Esq.
William Strachey wisheth
as full an accomplishment of his best Desires,
as devoutly as becoms the Dutie of a
Harty Freinde. January/21.
"This Christian prosecutiõ" was the Virginia Company and its system of
colonisation. There is also in one of the show-cases in the Bodleian an
interesting short dictionary of the language of the Chesapeake Indians
compiled by Strachey. In a note attached thereto Strachey says that he
thinks it will be useful to persons who wish to "trade or truck" with
the Indians.
Another memorable fact in regard to William Strachey I may mention here,
though it was not known to my father. I lately discovered that Campion,
the poet-musician, who, like Strachey, was a Member of Gray's Inn, wrote
a short Latin poem to Strachey. It is addressed "Ad Guillielmus
Strachæum." In it Campion tells Strachey that although he has very few
verses to give to his "old comrade," the man "who rejoiced in and made
many competent verses," he will always be dear to him. He ends by
calling him "summus pieridem unicusque cultor." The poem concludes
almost as it began: "Strachaeo, veteri meo sodali"--_To Strachey, my
old comrade_.
Evidently Strachey did not keep his verses entirely for dedication. As
far as I know, the best of his verses dedicatory are those addressed to
Lord Bacon in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia." They run:--
Wild as they are, accept them, so we're wee;
To make them civill will our honour be;
And if good worcks be the effects of myndes,
Which like good angells be, let our designes,
As we are Angli, make us Angells too;
No better worck can state--or church-man do.
The Campion connection interests me personally because Campion was the
protagonist of unrhymed lyrical verse--my special metrical hobby. I like
to think that William Strachey may have supported Campion in his
controversy with Gabriel Harvey, who, by the way, lived at Saffron
Walden, from which town came also William Strachey. There is danger,
however, in such speculation. Before long someone may prove that it was
not Bacon who wrote Shakespeare but Strachey who wrote both Bacon and
Shakespeare.
The following example of my father's family lore was still more
interesting and exciting to us. John Strachey, son of William Strachey,
married a Miss Hodges of Wedmore, an heiress in the heraldic sense,
through whom we can proudly claim to represent the Somersetshire family
of Hodges, whose arms we have always quartered. This lady's grandfather,
or great-grandfather--I am not quite sure which--was of the very best
type of Elizabethan soldiers-errant. He was killed at the Siege of
Antwerp in 1583.
He had the good fortune to be commemorated in one of the most spirited
epitaphs of his age. On the wall of Wedmore Church in Somersetshire is a
brass tablet bearing a heart surrounded by a laurel-wreath. The
inscription of the memorial runs thus:
* * * * *
Sacred to the memory of Captain Thomas Hodges, of the County of
Somerset, esq., who, at the siege of Antwerp, about 1583, with
unconquered courage won two ensigns from the enemy; where, receiving his
last wound, he gave three legacies: his soule to the Lord Jesus, his
body to be lodged in Flemish earth, his heart to be sent to his dear
wife in England.
Here lies his wounded heart, for whome
One kingdom was too small a roome;
Two kingdoms therefore have thought good to part
So stout a body and so brave a heart.
* * * * *
I have often wondered how a poet could have been found in Somersetshire
in those days to produce such spirited verse. The Elizabethan age, so
splendid in great poetry, was apt to be tortured and affected in what
Dr. Johnson called "lapidary inscriptions."
Little did I think when, as a boy, I first read those lines how closely
linked England was to remain with the soil where Thomas Hodges fell, how
many thousand stout bodies and brave hearts would again be laid in
Flemish earth, and how many true soldiers would in my own day deserve my
forbear's epitaph.
It seems most likely that Thomas Hodges's armour was preserved by the
Hodges and brought to Sutton by Miss Hodges. In an old Hodges inventory
which is still among the papers at Sutton there is mentioned "an armour
of proof." My father also used to tell us how he had seen two or three
sets of armour hanging on the brackets which supported the Minstrels'
Gallery in the Hall at Sutton. My father's uncle, alas, was born in the
eighteenth century and bred in India till about 1820. He was therefore
little affected by Scott and the Gothic revival. When he came back to
England, though full of interest in his house and family, he not only
removed the Minstrels' Gallery from the Hall, but allowed the armour
that had hung on it for some hundred and fifty years to be destroyed.
The Estate mason was seen mixing mortar in the breastplate, and the
coachman washed the carriage with his legs in the Cromwellian jack-
boots. Oddly enough, when we were quite small children, my eldest
brother, by pure accident, discovered half a steel helmet behind one of
the greenhouses.
Two swords, however, were allowed to remain at Sutton, and are there to
this day. They are, however, probably Cromwellian and not Elizabethan.
We know very little of what happened to the Stracheys during the Civil
War, for at the crisis of the conflict John Strachey was only a boy. He
was born in 1634 and therefore was only twenty-six at the end of the
Commonwealth, and would have been only fifteen years old at the time of
the King's execution. That the family were good Roundheads, however,
cannot be doubted, for John Strachey when he grew up became a close
friend of John Locke. Further, Captain Thomas Hodges, whose daughter was
later married to John Strachey, raised a troop of horse to fight on the
side of the Commonwealth. My father was always very proud of the fact
that the intellectual father of the Whigs was so closely united with our
ancestor. A propos of a deferred visit to Spain, Locke says in one of
his letters that he is glad he is not going, because he will now be able
to pay his visit to Sutton Court; "a greater rarity than my travels have
afforded me, for, believe me, one may go a long way before one meets a
friend."
Of all my father's stories those which delighted and thrilled us most
were his anecdotes of Clive. Clive, one might almost say, was the patron
saint of the family, and some day I hope to make a further and better
collection of legends in regard to him and other relations and
connections of my family with India.
But first I must explain why we Stracheys regard Clive as our patron
saint. It will be remembered how, after Clive had won Plassey, he came
home full of riches and honours, obtained his peerage and bought his
unique collection of rotten boroughs. He did not, however, remain long
at home. He was soon sent out to India again to reform the Civil Service
and to place the affairs alike of the Company and of the King,
_i.e._ the British Government and Parliament, on a sound basis. The
moment Clive left India, the Company's government had begun to
degenerate on all sides, military, naval, and civilian. In two years
corruption was destroying what Clive's statesmanship and military genius
had won.
Clive, when he agreed to return to Bengal was a Member of Parliament,
and like a wise man he knew that anyone who has to deal with great
affairs must be sure of a good Private Secretary. He looked round,
therefore, for an able and trustworthy young man, and lighted upon Henry
Strachey, who had just reached years of discretion. But I had better
quote Clive's own ringing words in regard to his selection. They will
serve to show, among other things, that Clive was not the kind of
inspired savage that he is sometimes portrayed, but a man with an
extraordinary command of the English language. In the speech in
the House of Commons in which Clive flung back the accusations made
against him in regard to the grants and presents which he took from Meer
Jaffir, not only after the Battle of Plassey but in the final settlement
which concluded his Indian career, he described the members of his
official family--the men whom he had taken out to India with him on that
occasion. As Strachey had become a Member of the House of Commons he
could not refer to him by name. Here are Clive's actual words:
[Illustration: The Close, Sutton Court, Somerset]
* * * * *
Another gentleman was my Secretary, now a Member of this House. He was
recommended to me by one of the greatest men in this Kingdom, now no
more, Mr. Grenville. Many and great are the obligations I have been
under to him (Grenville), but the greatest of all the obligations was
his having recommended to me this gentleman. Without his ability and
indefatigable industry I could never have gone through my great and
arduous undertaking, and in serving me he served the Company.
* * * * *
Curiously enough, we have no idea how Henry Strachey came across George
Grenville, or why George Grenville was able to give him so high a
character. In any case, Clive was a shrewd judge of men, and though very
good to his subordinates, would never tolerate inefficiency. His
approval meant much.
But Clive did more for us as a family than merely appoint Henry Strachey
to be his private secretary. It happened that at the time of his
appointment Henry Strachey was very much in the position in which Clive
was when he first went out to India. Henry Strachey was the eldest son
of a hopelessly embarrassed country gentleman of old family. John
Strachey, the friend of Locke, had been very well off, and so had his
son John, the Fellow of the Royal Society. Besides Sutton and an estate
at Elm and Buckland, near Frome, he owned a considerable amount of
property in Westminster. There are many interesting and amusing things
to tell of him, but here I will only say that the said John Strachey the
second had two wives and nineteen children, consequently at his death
the family estates were heavily "dipped." His son, Hodges Strachey, who
succeeded him, added to these pecuniary troubles, and then died; the
property descended to a younger brother, Henry Strachey. Though he
married into a rich Edinburgh family, the Clerks of Pennycuick, and so
was kinsman not only of the Clerks but of the Primroses, he did nothing
to redeem the fortunes of the family. Indeed, things had gone so far by
his time that the Strachey estates had actually passed to the mortgagees
in discharge of a sum of twelve thousand pounds. A year's grace was,
however, given. If the £12,000 could not be paid within the twelve
months, Sutton, and the whole of the land, would have passed for ever
from the family.
When Clive heard of this predicament, he, with extraordinary generosity,
advanced the money in anticipation of the remuneration which Strachey
was to receive for his services in India. Thus Sutton Court was saved.
Thanks to Clive there are still Stracheys at Sutton and I am here to
tell the tale. In those days twelve thousand pounds was a very big sum
of money indeed to an impecunious country gentleman, and a considerable
sum even to a man as rich as Clive. The modern equivalent would be over
£30,000. But Clive was not a man who hesitated to do things in a big
way, and he was well repaid. Henry Strachey was not only devoted to him
throughout his life, but acted as his executor and as the guardian to
his infant son and heir.
One of three or four pictures which Dance, the portrait-painter, painted
of Clive hangs to this day in the Hall at Sutton. It always thrilled me
to look at this picture, when a boy, because of the background, where,
surrounded by the smoke of battle, a company of horsemen with drawn
swords charge an invisible Oriental foe. If I remember rightly, the
British Cavalry played no part at Plassey, but probably the artist
thought that historical accuracy might quite legitimately be
subordinated in this instance to the demands of art.
I could fill this book with stories of Clive which my father had heard
from his father and from his uncle and from other contemporaries. I will
only mention one here, however, and I choose it because it further
illustrates the wonderful power of Clive's prose style, a power which
always impressed me, even as a boy. Just before Clive died by his own
hand, he addressed a letter to Henry Strachey, who had now become a
close friend as well as an ex-secretary, and who had married Lady
Clive's first cousin. He was thus a member of the actual as well as of
the official family of his Chief. Here are the words which Clive
addressed to Strachey:--
How miserable is my condition! I have a disease which
makes life insupportable, but which my doctors tell me won't
shorten it one hour.
If ever man conveyed the sense of physical suffering, deep melancholy,
and utter despair by the medium of the written word, it was Clive in
this passage. He had, it will be remembered, attempted suicide before,
as a young man. When the pistol refused to go off, he considered it an
omen that he was reserved for greater things.
My father used to tell us (whether on good medical evidence or not I do
not know) that it was supposed that Clive suffered from a very painful
form of dyspepsia accompanied by vertigo, and that when these attacks
came on they depressed him beyond measure. He lived in constant dread of
their recurrence, and it was upon a sudden sense that an attack was
impending that he cut his throat. He could not face again what might
have been an agony of three or four months' duration.
It was natural that, as boys, we liked especially to hear the story of
the suicide in Berkeley Square. There was plenty of blood and mystery in
the tale.
Some eight years before his death, I got my father, who was a very
accurate and careful man, to put down, partly from family papers and
partly from memory, as exact an account as he could of the actual
suicide. This, the authentic version of the suicide, I published in the
_Spectator_.
My father's stories of the first Sir Henry, as we were wont to call him,
Clive's Private Secretary, were many, and all of them poignant or
amazing. As a child, however, though I always delighted in them I did
not fully realise their historical interest. They gave a vivid picture
of the mind and actions of a Whig Member of Parliament from about 1770
to 1812, the period during which Henry Strachey was continuously in
Parliament. In the course of his forty years of public life, Henry
Strachey held a number of important offices, for he was a much-trusted
man. He played, indeed, a part more like that of one of the great
permanent officials of the present day than that of a politician. I take
it that he had not a powerful gift of speech and that he was not a
pushing man, otherwise, considering his brains and the way in which he
was trusted, he would have gone a good deal higher than he did. A story
which testifies to his influence is curious. When Burke began his
attacks in the Commons upon Warren Hastings, he tried to enlist support
from Henry Strachey, who does not seem to have thrown in his lot
especially with Hastings. All he would do, however, was to tell Burke
that he would be neutral--provided that, in the course of the attacks on
Hastings, Burke cast no aspersions upon the name and fame of Lord Clive.
If Clive's memory was assailed he, Strachey, would hit back. Whether it
was due to this fact or to some other, it is certain that Burke was
always careful to draw a clear distinction between the cases of Clive
and of Hastings.
Perhaps the most vivid story of all is the following. Strachey had been
in office in the ill-starred Coalition under Fox and North. When the
Ministry broke up, the King sent for Lord Shelburne, a member of the
Coalition, who, it will be remembered, at once formed a Government of
his own. While the Ministry was in the making, Henry Strachey met Fox on
Hay Hill, that minute yet "celebrated acclivity" which runs from the
corner of Berkeley Square into Dover Street. The smiling demagogue, who,
by the by, was a fellow member of Brooke's, hailed his ex-colleague with
a--
"Hullo, Strachey, what's going to happen to you?"
"Oh, Lord Shelburne says he wants me to keep my office."
"Then, by God, you're out!" Nobody, at that time, believed in
Shelburne's good faith. He was alleged by both sides to be a man on
whose word no dependence could ever be placed--a man who would tell you
that he wanted your assistance on the very day he had struck your name
out of the list of his Cabinet.
Things, however, turned out differently in Strachey's case, and
Shelburne kept his word. In all probability, indeed, he was a man who
was very much maligned.
In any case, Shelburne trusted Strachey, and when he began the
negotiations for the Peace of Versailles which ended the war with
America, and recognised the United States, Strachey was sent as a
negotiator. Originally a Member of Parliament named Oswald had been
employed at Paris, but he had not proved to be a match for the able
American delegates, Franklin, Jay, and Adams. Accordingly Strachey was
sent over to give tone and vigour to the British Delegation. As a family
we are exceedingly proud of the account of Strachey given by that great
man, John Adams, later President of the United States. It is contained
in his secret report sent to Washington from Paris:
Strachey is as artful and insinuating a man as they could
send; he pushes and presses every point as far as it can possibly
go; he has a most eager, earnest, pointed spirit.
That is a certificate of character of which any statesman or diplomat
might be proud.
But Strachey, I am glad to say, was more than a mere skilful agent. It
is now fully recognised by Canadian historians who have made a special
study of the question, that Strachey was the one man at Paris who stood
up for the United Empire Loyalists and did his very best to get for them
proper recognition and proper compensation. Unfortunately the British
Ministry was tired and callous, and Strachey's efforts did not prevail,
but he fought for the United Empire Loyalists to the end. Without his
help, things would have been worse than they were.
One thing that helped to make Strachey a good peace negotiator was the
fact that a year before he had gone to America as Secretary to Lord Howe
and Admiral Howe when they were sent out either to carry on the war by
sea and land, or else to make peace with the insurgent colonies.
As a result of this official visit to America, Strachey had a very large
number of confidential papers left in his possession, and some of these
have escaped the burning which was the fate of most of his
correspondence. He was one of the men who made it a practice to destroy
private papers as soon as they were done with. The story of these
American papers is, again, one which must be reserved for another
occasion. But, though the time has come to cut Henry Strachey off at the
main, and though I must reluctantly forego the account of his dealings
with George III, when he, Strachey, was Master of the Household, I
cannot resist giving one family document which my father was very fond
of reading to us and which was, I honestly think, regarded by the family
as the most priceless of all the papers kept in the strong-room at
Sutton Court. It went by the name of the "Head Munky" letter.
Lady Strachey, the first Sir Henry's wife, was a widow with children
when she married. She also had children by her second marriage and, as
several of these married, she had at the end of her life a large number
of grandchildren. Anyway, she was evidently a lady who thoroughly
understood what children want at a children's party. She fully
appreciated, that is, the value of bears, monkeys, crocodiles, and Punch
as entertainers of the young--witness the letter which follows:
WATER MARK 1804.
To Lady Strachey,
9 hill street
Berkeley square.
MY LADY,
agreebel to order James Botton and Company will attend
Tomorrow evening at 8 But begs to inform That the Bear
being Laim am afeard cant perform But the doggs and munkees
is in good condishon and will I hopes be aprooved with
the music
my tarms is as toilers pr nite
Bear ... ... ... ... ... 10. 6.
8 doggs for kotillin} ... 16
at pr dogg 2 }
musick 5
Drum and orms 7
head munky 7
3 others 9
keeper 2. 6
Punch is a seprit Consarn and Cums high but Can order
him at sam time though not in that line since micklemass he
belongs to Mr valentine Burstem at the marmaid
14 Princess Court
holborn--
I am
my Lady
your most dutiful
humbel servant
tuesday JAMES BOTTEN.
19 Piccadilly
P.S. Please Let the head munky Jacko Cum down The airy
on account not making no dirt in the haul
The Jentleman says consarning tubb for the crocodile but I
never Lets her out nor the ostriges as I explained to him for
your satisfaction--
My father always said, and no doubt with truth, that the "Jentleman"
alluded to at the end of the letter was the butler. He had evidently
been sent to "The Mermaid" or some other hostelry to negotiate for the
appearance of "Jacko." When I read the letter I always see a vivid
picture of "Jacko" coming over and down the area railings, hand over
hand, and wiping his paws on the doormat!
Evidently Mr. James Botten was an artist in his way and, like his
employer, understood the infant mind, for does he not put the bear at
the very top of his list and charges for him at the highest rate? Why
children so delight in bears and have such a firm belief that they are
kind, gentle, and grandfatherly animals is a piece of psychology which I
have never been able to fathom. As to the existence of the feeling,
there can be no possible doubt. My grandchildren, budding Montessorians
though they be, have the same absolute and unlimited confidence in bears
that I had at the age of three.
There is another story of this Lady Strachey which I may as well put in
here, because it is with such amazing clearness the characteristic of a
vanished age. My father used to say that when the second Sir Henry
Strachey came back from India, for he was there only ten years, his
father was still in Parliament. Henry Strachey was only just thirty, and
therefore there was the usual desire felt by his family to find
something for the young man to do--something "to prevent him idling
about in town and doing nothing or worse." In order to provide this
necessary occupation his mother offered him £4,000 with which to buy a
seat in Parliament. She thought that a seat would keep him amused and
out of mischief! In spite of the fact that he was a strenuous Radical,
Sir Henry's only remark in telling the story was: "I refused, because I
did not like the idea of always voting in the opposite lobby to my
father." The first Henry Strachey, though a staunch Whig in early life,
was a supporter of William Pitt and later, of Lord Liverpool. Therefore
the second Henry Strachey, if he had got into the House, when he first
came home, would no doubt have voted with the Radical Rump.
There are many stories I could tell of the second Sir Henry, who lived
on at Sutton till the year '58, when my father succeeded, but these
again must be kept for another book--if I ever have time to write it. I
must say the same of my own grandfather, my father's father, Edward
Strachey, and his memorable wife. Of both of them plenty is to be found
in Carlyle's account of his early years. I shall only record of Edward
Strachey here the fact that after he returned from India he became an
official at the India House on the Judicial side, and was called the
Examiner, his duties being to examine the reports of important law-cases
sent from India to the Board of Directors. When one day I asked my
father for his earliest recollection of any important event, he told me
that he could well remember his father coming back from the India House
(which was by a Thames wherry, for the Examiner lived at Shooter's Hill
and had to cross the river) and saying to his mother: "The Emperor is
dead." That was in the year 1822, and the Emperor was, of course,
Napoleon. Strachey was one of the first people to hear of the event
because St. Helena was borrowed by the Government for prison purposes
from the East India Company. The East Indiamen, however, still used it
as a house of call. Therefore it happened that the East India Company,
by the actual appearance of one of the ship's captains at the India
House, heard of the great event an hour or two before the Government to
whom the despatches were forwarded. My father must have been ten years
old at the time, as he was born in 1812.
CHAPTER VI
MY CHILDHOOD AND SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL INCIDENTS
And now for the child who was so happy in his surroundings, and, above
all, in those who were to care for him.
There were naturally certain nursery traditions about me of the
magnifying kind, but, taken as a whole, I don't think I can claim to
have been anything but a normal child, with health fair to moderate and
an intelligence which was reasonably quick and responsive. I had,
however, no educational precociousness; I did not read till I was nearly
nine, and even then did not use the power of reading. The book habit did
not come till I was twelve or thirteen-though then it came, as far as
poetry was concerned, with a rush. By fifteen I had read all the older
English poets and most of the new. In reading poetry I showed a devotion
which I am thankful to say I have always maintained. In this matter at
least I am the opposite of Darwin. He confessed that the power to read
poetry left him entirely in middle life. The older I grow, the more I
love verse.
The actual study of metre was a source of acute satisfaction. It is said
of me, indeed, that when, at a little more than two and a half years
old, we were starting for a long journey to Pau, where my mother had
been ordered to winter, I insisted on my father not packing, but taking
with him in his hand, Spenser's _Faerie Queen_. He had been reading
it to us that autumn. I did not know what a journey meant, but I was
determined the readings should not be broken. I also could not have
known what Spenser meant, but his stanza fed ear, and heart, and mind
with melody.
It was at this age, too, that I seem to have made two theological
observations which greatly amused my family. I was discovered one day
digging with tempestuous energy in the garden. When asked what I was
doing, I replied, "Digging for hell-fire!" That was especially curious
because my father, as a strong Broad Churchman and a devoted friend and
disciple of Frederick Maurice, was a wholehearted disbeliever in hell
and its flames. He had "dismissed Hell with costs," as Lord Westbury
said, ever since he came to man's estate. How I derived my knowledge on
this point was never cleared up. Demons with three-pronged forks and
curly tails are, of course, universally regarded as "the friends of
little children" by natural right, and my preference I must suppose was
transferred to their flaming home.
My other early piece of theological criticism was characteristic. Either
my father or my mother, I forget which, was explaining to me the story
of the Crucifixion and our Lord's arrest by the armed men of the High
Priest. Greatly surprised and perturbed by the fact that Christ did not
resist and make a fight of it I energetically enquired, "Hadn't He a
gun?" I was told No. "Hadn't He a sword?" No. And then: "Hadn't He even
a stick with a point?" Though not naturally combative, I have always
been a strong believer in the virtue of the counterattack as the best,
or, indeed, the only efficient form of self-defence.
I was, I believe, an easy-going, contented child, with no tendency to be
frightened either by strangers, by imaginary terrors, or by the dark. I
jogged easily along the Nursery high-road. There was, however, a family
tradition that, though as a rule I was perfectly willing to let other
children have my toys, and would not take the trouble to do what nurses
call "stand up for myself," I did occasionally astonish my playmates and
my guardians by super-passionate outbursts. These, however, were very
rare indeed, for all my life I have had a great dislike or even horror
of anything in the shape of losing my temper, an unconscious
recognition, as it were, of the wisdom of the Roman saying, "Anger is a
short madness." Instinctively I felt with Beaumont and Fletcher:
Oh, what a beast in uncollected man!
My general psychology, as far as I can tell from memory, was plain and
straightforward when a child. I have no recollection of feeling any
general depression or disappointment, of thinking that I was
misunderstood, _i.e._ of entertaining what is now called "an
inferiority complex." I never gave way to any form of childish
melancholy. I did not even have alarming, or mysterious, or metaphysical
dreams! What makes this more curious is the fact that I very much
outgrew my strength, about the age of nine or ten. I was not allowed to
play active games, or run about, or do any of the things in which I
delighted.
Though without great physical strength, I was all my life exceedingly
fond of the joys of bodily exercise, whether swimming, rowing, riding,
walking, mountaineering, skating, playing tennis or racquets or whatever
game was going.
In none of these pastimes did I reach anything approaching excellence,
but from all of them I got intense enjoyment. I tasted, indeed, almost
every form of athleticism and genuinely smacked my lips at the flavour
of each in turn, yet never bothered about the super-pleasure which
comes from doing such things as well as they can be done.
Though my bodily health did not give me an unhappy or depressed
childhood, or make me suffer from any sort of morbid reaction, I had
occasionally a very curious and somewhat rare experience--one which,
though it has been noted and discussed, has never, as far as I know,
been fully explained by physicians either of the body or of the soul.
The condition to which I refer is that which the musician Berlioz called
"_isolement_"--the sense of spiritual isolation, which seizes on
those who experience it with a poignancy amounting to awe. Wordsworth's
_Ode to Immortality_ affords the _locus classicus_ in the way
of description:
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised.
I once amused myself by getting together a large number of descriptions
of "_isolement_" and found that, though they may differ considerably,
they have in common the characteristics enumerated by the Ode.
The first thing to be noted about the sense of _isolement_ is that
it comes, not in sleeping, but in waking hours, and that, whether truly
or not, it brings with it the feeling that it is the result of some
external impulse. The best form of explanation, however, is to describe
as exactly as I can my own sensations. Though the sense of
_isolement_ has been experienced by me as a little child, as a lad,
as a young man, and even up to the age of forty or forty-five, the
recollections of my first visitation, which occurred when I could not
have been more, at the very most, than six years of age, are very much
more vivid and keener-edged than those of the later occasions.
Outside the two doors of the nurseries at Sutton Court there is a long
passage, and in this is something unusual--a little fire-place and
grate. I was one day standing in that passage, quite close to the grate,
and expecting nothing in particular. Then suddenly there came over me a
feeling so strange and so different from anything I had ever felt before
as to be almost terrifying. It was _overwhelming_ in the true
meaning of the word. Incredible as it seems in the case of so small a
child, I had the clearest and most poignant feeling of being left
completely, utterly alone, not merely in the world, but in something
far, far bigger--in the universe, in a vastness infinite and
unutterable.
As with Wordsworth, everything seemed to vanish and fall away from me,
even my own body. I was literally "beside myself." I stood a naked soul
in the sight of what I must _now_, though of course did not then,
call for want of better explanatory expressions, the All, the Only, the
Whole, the Everlasting. It was no annihilation, no temporary absorption
into the Universal Consciousness, no ingression into the Divine Shadow,
that the child experienced. Rather it was the amplest exaltation and
magnification of the Ego which it is possible to conceive. I gained, not
lost, by discarding the "lendings" of life. Something that was from one
point of view a void, and from another a rounded completeness, hemmed me
in.
Here I should perhaps interpolate yet another caveat. I did not, of
course, as a child, use or even know of the vocabulary of the
metaphysicians. I did, however, entertain thoughts which I could not
then express, but which the words given above most nearly represent.
There is one exception. In talking about "a naked soul" I am not
_interpreting_ my childish thrill of deep emotion into a later
vocabulary. I have always remembered the emotion in those very words. It
is so recorded on my memory. Of that I am sure.
The effect on me was intensely awe-inspiring--so awe-inspiring, indeed,
as to be disturbing in a high degree. Though it did not in the least
terrify me or torture me, or make me have anything approaching a dread
of its repetition, I experienced a kind of rawness and sensitiveness of
soul such as when, to put it pathologically, a super-sensitive mucous
membrane surface is touched roughly by a hand or instrument. One is not
exactly pained, but one quivers to the impact. So quivered my soul,
though not my brain or my body, for there was no suggestion of any
bodily faintness, or of any agitation of "grey matter," in the
experience. For example, I was not in the least dizzy. I was outside my
bodily self and far away from the world of matter.
In addition to this awe and sensitiveness, and what one might call
spiritual discomfort, there was something altogether curious and
unexpected, something that still remains for me as much the most vivid
and also much the most soul-shaking part of the experience, something
which many people will regard as impossible to have occupied the mind of
a child of six. I can best describe it, though very inadequately, as a
sudden realisation of the appalling greatness of the issues of living. I
avoid saying "life and death" deliberately, for Death was nowhere in the
picture. I was confronted in an instant, and without any preparation, or
gradation of emotion, not only with the immanence but with the ineffable
greatness of that whole of which I was a part. Though it may be a little
difficult to make the distinction clear, this feeling had nothing to do
with the sense of isolation. It was an entirely separate experience. I
felt, with a conviction which I know not how to translate into words,
that what I was "in for" by being a sentient human being was
immeasurably great. It was thence that the sense of awe came, thence the
extraordinary sensitiveness, thence the painful exhilaration, the
spiritual sublimation. "Oh! what a tremendous thing it is to be a living
person! Oh, how dreadfully great!" That is the way the child felt. That
was what kept ringing in my ears.
Though I was isolated, I had no sense of smallness or of utter
insignificance in face of the Universe. I did not feel myself a
miserable, fortuitous atom, a grain of cosmic dust. I felt, though,
again, I am interpreting rather than recording, that I was fully equal
to my fate. As a human being I was not only immortal, but _capax
imperii_,--a creature worthy of a heritage so tremendous.
From that day to this, talk about the unimportance, the futility of man
and his destiny has left me quite cold.
Though, as a small child, I was by no means without religious feeling,
and had, as I have always had, a deep and instinctive sense of the
Divine existence, I had not the least desire to translate my vision of
the universal into the terms of theology.
That is a very odd fact, but a fact it is. The vision remained, and
remains, isolated, immutable, and apart. Though I had perfect confidence
in my father and mother, and often talked to them of spiritual matters,
I did not at the time feel any impulse to relate my experience either to
them or to anyone else. I had no desire to unload my mind--a remarkable
thing for so eager a talker and expounder as I have always been. This
reticence, I am sure, came not from a fear of being laughed at, or of
shocking anyone, or again from a fear of a repetition of the experience.
It simply did not occur to me to talk. The experience was solely mine, I
was satisfied and even a little perturbed by the result. Probably some
sense of the great difficulty of finding words to fit my thoughts also
held me back.
It was only after two or three similar visitations that I casually told
the story of this "ecstasy" to my younger brother. I was then about
twenty-four and he twenty. I was much surprised to find that he had
never had any experiences of this particular kind, for I supposed them
common. He, however, became much interested, and some little time after
showed me the passage to which I have referred in Berlioz'
_Memoirs_.
This set me investigating, and I soon found examples of states of
ecstasy similar to, if not exactly like, my own. Tennyson supplied one
in the visional passages in the _Princess_. Kinglake had a
visitation akin to _isolement_. Wordsworth, however, came nearest
to my sensations. Indeed, he describes them exactly.
My later manifestations of _isolement_ were similar to my first,
though not so vivid. As I write at the age of sixty-two, my impression
is that the last occasion on which I experienced the sense of
_isolement_ was about twenty years ago. How welcome would be a
repetition! I do not, however, expect another ecstasy, any more than did
Wordsworth, and for very much the same reasons. I do not think that the
vision was due to any morbid or irregular working of the brain, or to
any other pathological or corporeal mal-functioning. I believe that the
experience was purely an experience of the spirit. That is why I
attribute to it a psychological and even metaphysical value.
At any rate, it corresponds with my personal metaphysic of existence.
Further, I think with Wordsworth that in all probability the fact that
it was most vivid in early childhood and gradually ceased when I grew
up, is a proof that in some way or other it was based on a spiritual
memory. Wordsworth, after the description I have already given, goes
on:--
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised;
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence; truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
That seems to me the explanation which can most reasonably be applied to
the mental phenomena which I have described. It satisfied me completely.
Wordsworth struck the exact balance between mental exaltation and the
trembling "like a guilty thing surprised," of which I have given a more
prosaic account.
I must add here that the _Ode to Immorality_ is not a poem which my
father used to read to us as children, and as far as I can remember I
did not take to reading it, or know anything about it, till I was
seventeen or eighteen; that is, ten or twelve years later. Even when it
became a favourite with me, for some reason or other I did not dwell
upon the _isolement_ part of it, but rather upon the earlier
passages. Curiously enough, it was a quotation in Clough's _Amours de
Voyages_ which first made me realise that Wordsworth was dealing with
_isolement_.
I hope no one will think that in describing my experiences of
_isolement_ in my own mind I was exaggerating the importance of the
incident. I know that similar waking trances are very common. I also
know that modern psychology, or, I should say, certain schools of modern
psychology, regard them merely as manifestations or outcrops of the
unconscious self. If I understand the argument rightly, they hold that
just as in dreams the unconscious self gets possession of one's
personality and the consciousness is for a certain time deposed or
exiled, the same thing may happen, and does happen in our waking hours.
Therefore _isolement_ must not be regarded as anything wonderful or
mystic, but merely as a day-dream. I admit that this seems at first
sight a plausible explanation. Yet I can say with Gibbon, "this
statement is probable; but certainly false."
Anyone who has experienced the feeling as I experienced it would think
it by no means unlikely that it represented something far deeper, and
was due to some impulse external to oneself. Certainly to me the feeling
was essentially one of revelation, of being suddenly made to see and
understand things which before had been dark or unknown. I realised that
what I should now call the materialistic hypothesis would not help me to
a solution. No "fanciful shapes of a plastic earth" were in my vision.
My _Ego_, whatever it was or was to be, was, I perceived, a spirit
and not a creature of flesh-and-blood, and also not a hypothesis, but a
reality.
Since it is appropriate to my account of the phenomenon of
_isolement_, I may add a curious passage in Walt Whitman's
_Specimen Days and Collect_, which shows that the poet knew this
form of ecstasy:
Even for the treatment of the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or
anything, sooner or later we come down to our single, solitary soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises,
independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining,
eternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever you
are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most
spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and
only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the
significant wonders of heaven and earth (significant only because of the
Me in the centre), creeds, conventions fall away and become of no
account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision,
it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the
fable, once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth
and spreads to the roof of heaven. The quality of BEING, in the object's
self, according to its own central idea and purpose, and of growing
therefrom and thereto--not criticism by other standards and adjustments
thereto--is the lesson of Nature.
Who knows whether this may not be Walt Whitman's "secret," or, at any
rate, the spiritual experience of which the poet's latest biographer,
Mr. Emory Holloway, writes? His interesting account of Walt Whitman's
Manuscript Note-Books is preceded by the following statement:
The first of these (The MS. Note-Books) begins with a sense of
suppressed, half-articulate power in the language of a novel ecstasy.
Some mystical experience, some great if not sudden access of
intellectual power, some enlargement and clarifying of vision, some
selfless throb of cosmic sympathy, has come to Walt Whitman. At first he
can only ejaculate his wonder, and pray for the advent of a perfect man
who will be worthy to communicate to the world this new vision of
humanity. Then, like the prophet Isaiah, whose great book he is wont to
carry in his pocket to Coney Island, he suddenly realises that a vision
is itself a commission; and from this moment he dedicates himself to a
life task as audacious as it seems divine.
Though the subject, I admit, fascinates me, I must say no more on it,
lest my autobiography should become "a sort of a commentary" on "the
ecstasy," featuring Plotinus!
Though always intensely interested in things psychical, and a copious
reader of all the phenomena of the unseen world, I have only had one
other psychic adventure in the whole of my life, and that an
insignificant one. It is, however, worth recording shortly. It happened
that in the early autumn of the year 1920, while my son was away from
home, learning French in a family at Versailles, I went to my dressing-
room to sleep, at about three o'clock in the afternoon. I woke up at
four o'clock--an hour's sleep is my ration--with a start and the
recollection that I had just dreamt a dream of a very alarming kind. In
my dream my wife had come to me with a telegram in her hand, and had
told me that our son had been killed in a hunting accident in France.
The impression was extremely vivid, and for a moment I was greatly
perturbed. This, however, did not last. A little reflection soon made me
feel that it could be nothing but a bad dream--a nightmare. People do
not hunt in August, or at Versailles, and therefore there was no reason
whatever to regard the dream seriously. Still, as a faithful member of
the Psychical Society, I thought I must take notice of the incident,
even though it seemed ridiculous. No scientific investigator ever dares
to say that any "odd" observed fact is not worth considering.
Accordingly I sat down and wrote to my son, mentioning the dream and
asking whether between three and four on that day he was in any kind of
mental trouble or anxiety--anything that by an imperfect telephonic
message might have got through to me as a hunting accident. To my
astonishment, I received by return a letter from Versailles telling me
that about three-fifteen on the day in question he had been in a small
railway accident, which, though not resulting in any deaths, had injured
several people, and had given him a fairly severe shaking.
Considering how seldom I dream, and if I do dream, how seldom the dream
concerns anybody else, it is difficult to account for this as a mere
coincidence. My dreams, when I have them, are practically all of the
pure nightmare description and of the usual sealed-pattern. I am worried
by the sense of not being able to pack in time to catch my train, or
else I am compelled to go back to Oxford and try to pass an examination
under impossible and humiliating conditions. Indeed, I don't think I can
ever remember a dream, except this one about my son, which was of a non-
egotistical kind, that is, in which somebody else speaks, and of which I
am not the centre. In a word, it seems to me that, though my son had no
recollection of thinking of me (the accident was not important enough
for that), his unconscious self got busy and, as I was in a light sleep,
it was able to telephone an excited message to its nearest relation, my
unconscious self.
CHAPTER VII
MY CHILDHOOD (_Continued_)
It must not be supposed that either my childhood or boyhood was a
psychic or poetic affair, or that in any way I was a cranky and abnormal
child. I was nothing of the kind. In spite of what I had better call my
metrical precociousness, which I deal with in detail in a later chapter,
I was exceedingly fond of outdoor sports of all sorts. Though never a
very strong swimmer, I loved particularly what Dr. Johnson might have
called the "pleasures of immersion," whether in the icy cold of our
Somersetshire streams or in the bland waters of the Mediterranean. The
back of the horse and the buffet of the wave still remain for me the
intensest of physical delights. Next in my affections comes mountain-
climbing, though here I must not write of it. Instead, I would record
two memories--one of the very beginning, and one of the very end, of my
childhood. My very first memory is concerned with the American Civil
War--a conflict which has always exercised a great influence over my
mind. To me the struggle between the North and the South stands for one
of the pivotal facts in the history of the English-speaking race. I have
a clear recollection of my mother showing me a full-page picture,
probably in the _Illustrated London News_, entitled "The Last Shot
in the War." It was, if my memory serves, a darkish picture, with a big
piece of artillery dimly portrayed in the foreground, and a still dimmer
background, in which one seemed to catch sight of shadowy armies, warring
in the gloom. Or were they only trees and clouds? I cannot remember my
mother's words, but I have a recollection, firm though so distant, that
she told me how the great war had come about, and how this was the end of
all the misery and slaughter. The year, I think, must have been '65, that
is, when I was five years old.
[Illustration: Sutton Court, Somerset.]
As soon as my father began to talk to us of great events, which was when
I was about six, and to expound, as fathers should, the merits of the
struggle, I became an intense Northerner. All my father's sympathies
were with the North, both on the imperative duty of maintaining the
Union and on the slavery issue. He was an intense abolitionist. As a lad
of sixteen or seventeen, he had given up sugar, at the end of the
'twenties, because in those days sugar was grown by slaves on the West
Indian plantations. He would not support a slave industry, and until the
slaves were freed he did not go back to sugar.
Curiously enough, though my father greatly admired Mr. Lincoln, he did
not put into my mind that passionate devotion to the saviour of the
Union which I developed later. By this I do not mean that he was
critical of Lincoln, but merely that Lincoln was not one of his special
heroes. This fact, however, made a sounder foundation for my feelings
about America and the American people than would the mere cult of the
individual. I learned first to understand the greatness of the
separation issue, to realise the magnificence and the significance of
the American nation.
Another point of interest in the context is worth noting. My American
readers must not run away with the idea that there was anything strange
in a Somersetshire squire being on the side of the North. It is quite a
delusion to suppose that all the people of education and position in
England were Southerners. They were nothing of the kind. I cannot, of
course, remember those times myself, but I often talked them over with
men like Lord Cromer, who not only was on the Northern side, but paid a
visit to the Northern Armies as a young artillery officer, and heard the
guns at Petersburg. He pointed out how strong Conservatives such as his
uncle, Tom Baring, were convinced Northerners, as was also, of course,
Disraeli.
No doubt the man who did the harm in England and made Americans believe
that we rejoiced in the rebellion, was Mr. Gladstone. Partly through
want of information and partly through a curious mental twist, he
persuaded himself that the South was fighting for freedom like the
Italians in Naples or Lombardy. He not only believed in "the erring
sister, go in peace" policy, but considered that for "erring sister"
should be substituted "good and gallant sister." Mr. Gladstone's
influence was, unfortunately, at that time very great, and he misled an
enormous number of people on the merits of the quarrel. Happily my
father, though a keen admirer of Gladstone, did not follow him here. He
maintained the Northern view against all comers, as did the Duke of
Argyll, Lord Houghton, and dozens of other men of light and leading,
including, I am glad to say, my future chiefs, the Editors of _The
Spectator_.
Of another combative memory I can be more specific, for my recollection
of it is positively photographic. I can see myself, a little creature in
a straw hat, playing on what the nurses used to call "the libery lawn"--
a beautiful stretch of sward, upon which the Great Parlour window
opened. This lawn is half surrounded by an old red sandstone battlement
wall, with a long, terrace-like mound in front of it. Suddenly, in the
middle of our play, I saw the Great Parlour window open and my father,
with his hand held to shelter his eyes from the glare, stepping on to
the gravel path. He called to my elder brother and me that if we liked
he would read us an account of a great battle that had just been fought
in Austria. It was the Battle of Sadowa. My father held in his hand a
copy of the _Daily News_, to which he was a fairly frequent
contributor. The paper contained Forbes's vivid account of the action
which humbled the Austrian Empire before its Hohenzollern rivals. I was
always glad to hear about a fight, and was very soon tucked up at the
end of my father's green sofa. Owing to his stiff knee he always used a
sofa to rest and read on rather than sat in an armchair. He began to
read at once, for he was as eager as we were to devour the story of how
"Our Special Correspondent" climbed the church-tower and saw men and
armies battling in the plain below.
I did not, of course, understand the nature of the war, but my father
was greatly moved and read with such emotion that the encounter lived
before my eyes. Here I should note that my father, though the most
humane of men, was intensely fond of stories of war, and in a layman's
way understood a good deal about strategy. For example, he knew not
only, like Sir Thomas Browne, all the battles in Plutarch, but also all
the big Indian battles and those of the Peninsula. He was a special
student of Waterloo, for he had talked with plenty of men and officers
who had been in the Belgian Campaign.
Another recollection of my childhood will come in aptly here, for it
concerns a Waterloo veteran. He lived at Chew Magna, and kept a small
shop. Like many of the combatants on the British side, he was probably
only about fifteen or sixteen years old at Waterloo. Half the regiments
there were Militia regiments, and notoriously were composed of lads.
Therefore, in '69 or '70, when I used to ride over to see him, my
soldier was only about seventy-one or seventy-two. At his shop could be
bought pencils, pens, and little books of most attractive appearance,
sealing-wax and many other objects fascinating to the schoolboy.
However, the real attraction was the seller, and not the things sold. As
soon as I discovered that the man had been at Waterloo, I loved to go
in, pull over the old man's stock, and then gossip with him about the
Battle. Unless my recollection plays me false, he was distinctly a good
talker. This is how he told the story of the 18th of June:
Our regiment was marched out into a cornfield. The officers told us to
lie down on the ground and wait, because the enemy had got their
artillery playing on us. Cannon-balls kept coming over pretty close to
the ground. If we kept flat, however, there was not much risk. Every now
and then the artillery fire would cease entirely, and then our officers
called us to get up as quick as ever we could, and form square. The
front rank lay down, the second rank knelt, the third stooped low, and
the rear rank stood up. Our bayonets were fixed and our muskets loaded.
There was not much time. As soon as we had got into place we heard the
cavalry thundering up. Then, all of a sudden and as if they had sprung
up from the ground (there was a little hollow in front), they were
riding round us, riding like mad, cursing and swearing and shouting,
waving their swords, and trying to force their horses on to our
bayonets. We kept shooting at 'em all the time. But the bullets used to
bound off their steel coats. (They were, of course, cuirassiers.) We
soon found out, however, that if we aimed under their arm-pits, or at
their faces, or the lower part of their bodies, we could kill them, or
at least damage them. Our square was never really broken, but every now
and then one of the Frenchmen would drive his horse right through our
bayonets and into the middle, where we killed him. Of course, their idea
was that if one got in, the others could follow him, but we never let
them do that. We always closed up and held fast. Then, all of a sudden,
the cavalry would go back as quick as they came, and in a minute there
was not one of them to be seen. They had all utterly disappeared. As
soon as ever they were gone, the guns began to fire again, and down we
all went flat to the ground, and this went on all the morning, first up
and then down.
From a private soldier's point of view, this was, I expect, a very
accurate description of the battle.
I, of course, wanted to know more, and especially whether he had seen
the Duke. He declared that he had, but it was a dim picture. According
to my friend, he saw the Duke and his staff riding by at the back of the
square, and heard him say something to an officer, but what he did not
catch. If he had only known, he was describing a particular
characteristic of the Duke. Wellington, when in action, was the dumbest
of dumb things, and it would have required a moral earthquake to get
more than some curt order out of him. Even a "tinker's curse" or "a
tuppenny damn" would have seemed loquacious in him on such an occasion.
The not very sensational "_Up Guards and at 'em!_" was in later
life disputed by the Duke. Under great pressure, the most he would admit
was that he might possibly have said it, though he did not believe he
ever did.
The kind of battle remark he favoured was one which my father used to
tell me he had heard from Mountstewart Elphinstone, his father's bosom
friend. Elphinstone rode with the Duke at the Battle of Assaye. When
some hundred Mahratta guns were in full blast against the British line,
Elphinstone asked Sir Arthur Wellesley--it was Elphinstone's first
battle--whether the fire was really hot. "Well, they're making a good
deal of noise, but they don't seem to be doing much damage," was the
reply of the Duke, after he had carefully looked up and down the line.
By a curious piece of luck, we boys were in touch not only with a
Waterloo veteran, but also with a man who had been at Trafalgar. At Lady
Waldegrave's house, Strawberry Hill, one of the men in the garden had
been, as a boy, on the _Victory_. My brother Harry remembers
speaking to him, but, though I must have seen him, I have no
recollection of him, and probably did not talk to him. If I had, I am
sure I should have questioned him, and would probably have remembered
the answers.
I will end the stories of my childhood by relating an incident which
always seems to me to belong to the earlier epoch, though it really
happened when I was about thirteen, and therefore no longer a child. The
scene is Sutton, and therefore it must have been during the holidays,
for I am sure I was living at our tutor's at Chewton at the time. I had
gone out for a country walk by myself, for I was fond of roaming about
the fields, and especially of tracing to their sources the wooded
gullies abounding in our Somersetshire country. On such solitary rambles
I was always accompanied by a poet, in my pocket. On the occasion I am
going to describe, Swinburne in his _Poems and Ballads_ was my
guest of honour.
I emerged from my riverine exploration on to a hillside where the stream
rose--near a place with the delightfully rustic name of Hinton Belwit.
Here the springtime and the bright sun invited me to sit upon a stile
and to read of Dolores or Faustine, or _The Garden of Proserpine_,
--I know not which. While thus absorbed and probably muttering verses
aloud, I did not notice a typical Somersetshire farmer of the seventies
who was approaching the stile. When, therefore, I heard his voice and
looked up, it was as if the man had dropped from the clouds. What he was
saying was quite as unexpected as his appearance. It ran something like
this: "It be all craft, craft. You men be as full of craft as hell be of
tailors." Needless to say, I was enchanted. This looked like the
beginning of an adventure, for the old gentleman was puffing hard and in
the condition which Jeremy Taylor describes as "very zealously angry."
I, however, was too much interested to learn what he meant to resent his
abuse, and politely invited an explanation. He went on to declare with
great vehemence what a curse this book-learning and education were to
the working-men and how they filled them with "craft"--that was the
refrain of all his remarks. It made them unfit to work and to serve
honest men like himself, who had never had anything to do with that evil
thing--book-learning. When I gently asked why the sight of me had made
him think about it, he explained, with a look of infinite slyness, that
he saw I was reading a book. Then came an amusing disclosure. At
fourteen I was a very much overgrown lad, almost as tall as I am now,
and weighing almost as much and he had mistaken me for one of the
ordination pupils of a Roman Catholic priest who lived in the valley
close by. They were wont to walk about the country breviary in hand, not
merely reading, but actually reciting the office to themselves. My green
book was taken for a breviary, or for a book of hours, and my mouthings
of _Dolores_ or _The Garden of Proserpine_ for "the blessed
mutter of the Mass"! Assured by me that I was not a priest, he asked me
who I was. I told him my name and he instantly stretched out a huge and
grimy hand, and shook mine with a hearty violence, and insisted that I
should come home with him and drink a mug of cider. I accepted with
avidity. It was all in the adventure. Who knows? I might go to his house
and find the most delightful maiden in disguise! In fact, anything and
everything was possible. So I went, expecting and hoping for great
things, though quite willing to be content with small things and "a mug
o' zyder" if I could not get anything bigger.
As soon as we got into the farm kitchen and saw the farmer's wife, the
old gentleman began to explain his mistake. "And to think, Mother, that
this be young Mr. Strachey, after all. You can mind, carn't you, wife,
how we used to see him and his brothers riding by with their ponies and
their long hair? It is just like King Arthur and the cakes, it is." At
this his good wife, with a toss of her head, said, "Don't you be so
ignorant, maaster, talking about what you don't know. It's King Henry
you means." "That I don't. I mean King Arthur. You go down and get the
young maaster a mug o' zyder, and don't you say no more."
Then he slowly closed one pig-like eye and aimed it in my direction.
That was his idea of winking. Patting me on the knee, he added, "The
women be always like that--bain't they?--always trying to think they
know better. It was just like King Arthur and the cakes, weren't it?" I,
of course, assented and, I am sorry to say, with the magnificent
pedantry of boyhood, reflected that he was not the first person to make
the mistake. Did not Mrs. Quickly piously ejaculate that the dead
Falstaff was "in Arthur's bosom"? Besides, it was proof that the
Somersetshire people still remembered King Arthur--a point treasured by
me for my father, who was a keen student and great lover of the
Arthurian legends. It was he who edited for Macmillan the _Morte
d'Arthur_ in the Globe series. According to my father, and I expect
quite rightly, Arthur was the last of the British kings to stand up
against the Saxons, and really did inhabit that most magnificent of
ditch-defended hills, Cadbury Castle.
Cadbury, as the village at its foot, Queen's Camel, shows, is quite
possibly a broken-down form of Camelot. But there is better proof than
that. Till forty years ago, and possibly even now, the people round
Cadbury told tales of King Arthur, and firmly believed he would come
again. For example, the rector of Queen's Camel told my father that a
local girl, a housemaid in the Rectory, told him, as if it were a matter
of course, that every night of the full moon the King and his Knights
rode round the castle hall and watered their horses at the Wishing-Well.
She had seen them herself. Another man told the rector that his father
had one day seen a sort of opening in the hill, and had looked in.
"There he zeed a king sitting in a kind of a cave, with a golden crown
on his head and beautiful robes on him."
The best Arthurian story of all was the following. The rector, as an
archaeologist, did a little excavation on his own on the flat place at
the very top of the hill--a place in which there were what looked like
rough foundations. He used to take with him a local labourer to do some
of the spade-work. One day they dug up a Quern. The labourer asked what
it was. The clergyman explained that it was a form of hand-mill used in
the olden days for grinding corn. In reply he was met with one of the
most amazing remarks ever made to an antiquarian. "Oh, a little hand-
mill be it! Ah, now I understands what I never did before. That's why
they fairies take such a lot of corn up to the top of the hill. They be
taking it up for to grind."
Anticipating Kipling, the rector might well have exclaimed, "How is one
to put that into a 'Report on Excavations on Cadbury Hill submitted to
the Somersetshire Archaeological Society by the Rector of Queen's
Camel'?"
Anyway, I was delighted to have actually heard a man speak the words
"King Arthur," and also went home chuckling at the thought of being
mistaken for a Roman priest--an event which particularly amused my
mother.
Soon after I was eleven, we went to Chewton Vicarage for the first time
as "private pupils." Then my mother's health became worse, and we had to
go to Cannes more or less regularly. In order that our education should
be continued, we then reverted to the plan of tutors in the house. We
had two of these in succession, both Balliol men. Though they were able
men, they were not successes as educationalists. My father always used
to say that he thought both of them had been badly overworked at Oxford
and had been advised to take tutorial posts as a rest-cure--a very
pleasant rest-cure when it took the form of wintering in the South of
France.
But, though my brothers and I effectually resisted the efforts made to
teach us, we learnt during our winters in France a great many things
indirectly. Unfortunately, French was not one of those things. My father
would have liked us to speak and write French. He had it, however, so
strongly impressed upon him by his advisers that if we were to go to
Oxford we must above all things get a sufficient knowledge of Latin and
Greek to pass Responsions that, though we had an occasional lesson in
French, our sojourn on the Riviera, as far as learning French was
concerned, was thrown away.
We lived entirely with the boys and girls of the rest of the British
colony, and regarded the French inhabitants literally as part of the
scenery, and largely as a humorous part thereof. We got on well enough
with them, and knew enough French to buy endless sweets at Rumpelmeyer's
or _chez Nègres_, to get queer knives and "oddities" at the fairs,
or to conduct paper-chases along the course of the Canal or in Pine Woods
bordering it. We refused, however, to take the French or their language
seriously.
[Illustration: Sutton Court, Somerset]
However, my father did contrive to instil a little French politics into
us. He was a fervent admirer of Gambetta and the Third Republic, and
used to read us extracts from Gambetta's organ, _La Republique
Francaise_. It thus happened that I early became a staunch adherent
of the great Democratic leader and was full of zeal against first the
Comte de Chambord and then the Comte de Paris. I still remember the
excitement we all felt over Marshal MacMahon's rather half-hearted
efforts to play the part of a General Monk.
We had, further, the excitement of seeing a famous General immured close
to us in a fortress prison for the crime of treason. The Ile de Ste.
Marguerite, opposite Cannes, with its picturesque Vauban fortifications,
became, while we were at Cannes, the prison of Marshal Bazaine, the man
who surrendered Metz to the Germans. He occupied, besides, the very
rooms which had been occupied by "The Man with the Iron Mask." Can it be
wondered that when we had a picnic-party on the island, or rowed under
the walls of the fortress in a boat, we used to strain every muscle in
order to get a glimpse of the prisoner? On one occasion we saw
somebody's hat or head moving along a parapet, and were told it was the
Marshal taking his daily exercise on the terrace of the fort, but
whether it really was or not, who can say? At any rate, the Marshal
escaped from his imprisonment during our stay, probably to the relief of
his jailers. That was a source of great excitement in itself, and it was
heightened by rumours that an English girl had assisted the prisoner to
break out.
We were not personally in favour of Bazaine, but regarded him with
distinct repulsion for surrendering at Metz. Still, an escape was an
escape; and, besides, the fat old Marshal had let himself down by a rope
into an open boat!
The epoch of tutors came to an end soon after the birth of my sister,
which happened at Marseilles, when my mother was on her way to Cannes.
After the event, my mother was pronounced by the doctors to be able to
winter in England, and I and my two brothers, therefore, went back to
Chewton Mendip and became private pupils of Mr. Philpott, for the second
time. Here we remained till I went first to a tutor at Oxford--Mr. Bell--
and then to live with my uncle and aunt, Professor T. H. Green (Mrs.
Green was my mother's sister). There I was "coached for Balliol" by two
of the best scholars in the University. One of them was Professor
Nettleship, who a couple of years later was made Professor of Latin, and
the other is now Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen. They were
both delightful expounders of the classics, and, though I was an
unaccountably bad scholar, I am proud to say that they both liked me and
liked teaching me. However, I need say no more on this point, as all
that is worth saying about it is supplied by Sir Herbert Warren in the
letter which I have included in my Oxford Chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMILY NURSE
In the families of the well-to-do few influences have a greater effect
upon the child, and so upon the man, than that exercised by the servants
of the household in which he or she is brought up. And of those
influences, upstairs or downstairs, none, of course, is so potent as
that of the nurse. That is what Goethe would call one of the secrets
that are known to all. Why it should ever be regarded as a secret Heaven
knows; yet it must be so considered, for it is very seldom spoken of
except in the case of nurses.
Anyway, I and my brothers, and in our earlier years my sister, were
quite as fortunate in our nurse as we were in our parents and in our
home. Her name was Mrs. Leaker. She was not married, but bore the brevet
rank always accorded to upper servants of her position. She played many
parts in our family household, and always with a high distinction. She
began as nurse; she next became cook; then housekeeper; then reverted
for a time to nurse, and then became something more than housekeeper
because she ruled over the nursery as well as over the kitchen, the
store-room, and the housemaids' room. But whatever her name in the
household, and whatever her duties, she was always in fact head-nurse.
She loved children, and they loved her, though not without a certain
sense of awe. She had a fiery temper; but that fieriness was reserved
almost entirely for grown-up people. A child, if it knew the proper
moment for action, could do anything it liked with her.
Taken altogether, she was one of the most remarkable women, whether for
character or intellect, that I have ever come across. In appearance she
had, what can be best described as, the gipsy look, though she did not
believe herself to have gipsy blood. Her complexion was swarthy, her
hair was black, and her eyes dark and full of an eager and scintillating
brightness which made her face light up and change with every mood of
her mind and radiate a vivid intelligence. If anyone who knew her was
asked to state the most memorable thing about her, I am sure the answer
would be, "mobility," both of mind and body. There was a quickness as
well as a lightness in her step--I hear it as I write--in the gestures
of her hands and her head, and indeed in everything she did.
Let nobody suppose for a moment that this was a case of _paralysis
agitans_, or St. Vitus' Dance. There was nothing involuntary in her
unrest. It was all part of an intense vitality and an intense desire for
self-expression. When she was in one of her worst tempers, she would
pace up and down a room, turning at each wall like a lion in a cage, in
a way which I have only seen one other person effect with equal spirit
and unconsciousness. That was an eminent statesman, in the moment of
great political crisis. Her nature was so eager and so active, and
seemed to be so perpetually fretting her body and mind, that anyone
seeing her in middle life would have been inclined to prophesy that such
agitations must wear her out prematurely and that she had only a short
life before her, or else an imbecile's end.
Yet, as a matter of fact, she lived in good health till over eighty, and
to the last moment retained the full control of her faculties. She died,
as might any other old person, of bronchitis. In truth, she was an
example of Sir Thomas Browne's dictum that we live by an invisible flame
within us. As a matter of fact, her flame was anything but invisible. It
was remarkably visible. It leapt, and crackled, and gleamed, and took on,
like the witch's oils, every colour in the spectrum. Now crimson, now
violet, now purple, now yellow, glowed and flashed the colours of her
mind.
[Illustration: Mrs. Salome Leaker,--"The Family Nurse."]
Mrs. Leaker was brought up in a poor household, in an age when
illiteracy, alas! seemed the natural fate of the poor. But you could no
more have kept education from her than you could have kept food from a
hungry lioness. She was determined to get it somehow, and get it she
did. She taught herself to read before she had reached womanhood, and
taught herself by pure force of her will, adopting, curiously enough,
what would now be described as the Montessori method. She opened books
and read them somehow or other till she understood the meaning of the
words. Her letters her mother had taught her. She often told me that
nobody had taught her to read. When she had attained the power of
reading, self-education was easy enough. It led to results of an amazing
kind--results which at first sight seem to prove all the lore of the
educationalists at fault. People, we are told, must be trained to like
and understand good literature. Without that training they will never
know the good from the bad.
Now read this story of an innate appreciation of good literature which
she told me with her own lips. I asked her once, when I was a lad, what
she thought of "Junius," who had begun to exercise a great influence
over my rhetorical instincts. It was as natural to consult her on a
point of literature as on one of domestic surgery. Her reply was perhaps
the strangest ever made by a woman over sixty to a boy of undergraduate
age. It ran in this way, for I recall her words.
When I was a girl, and a young housemaid in my first place at Mrs.
Lloyd's, in Clifton, I used to have as part of my work to dust the
library. When I was dusting, I used to take down the books and look at
what was in them, and often got through a page or two with my duster in
my hand. Once I took down a volume marked "Junius," and read a page or
two, and as I read I began to feel as if I was drunk. In those days I
had never heard of the Duke of Grafton or Lord Sandwich, or any of the
other people he talks about, and I did not know what it all meant, but
the words went to my head like brandy.
Now, I ask anyone with a sense of literature whether it would be
possible to give a better lightning criticism of "Junius" and his style
than that conveyed in Leaker's words. She had got the exact touch.
"Junius," in truth, is not only empty for her, but empty for the whole
world except as regards his style. There he is unquestionably great.
Tumid, exaggerated, and monotonous as it often is, his style does affect
one like wine. That is certainly how it affected, and still affects, me.
Even at an age when I did not really know much more about the Duke of
Grafton than did Leaker, and probably cared less, I had got the
peroration of the first letter to the Duke of Grafton by heart. I used
to walk up and down the terrace, or across the meadows that led to the
waterfall, shouting to myself, or my bored companions, that torrent of
lucid, thrilling invective. I mean the passage in which "Junius" gives
advice to the University of Cambridge. They will, he hopes, take it to
heart when they shall be "perfectly recovered from the delirium of an
Installation," and when that learned society has become "once more a
peaceful scene of slumber and thoughtless meditation."
How the waterfall gave me back the reverberating words! How the lime
trees rocked to the final crack of the whip over the unhappy Grafton!
"The learned dullness of declamation will be silent; and even the venal
Muse, though happiest in fiction, will forget your virtues."
But that was by no means her only achievement of literary diagnosis and
the power to get hold of books somehow or other. When in the 'twenties
she came to Bristol from Dartmouth, which was her home, with her mother
and brothers (her father was dead), she travelled, as did all people
with slender means in those days, in the waggon. These vehicles
proceeded at the rate of about three or four miles an hour. All she
could tell about her journey was that she lay in the straw, in the
bottom of the waggon, and read Wordsworth's _Ruth, The White Doe of
Rylstone_. She was, throughout her life, very fond of _Ruth_ and
this was her first reading. I have often thought to myself how much the
great apostrophe must have meant to the lion-hearted, vehement,
imaginative girl:
Before me shone a glorious world,--
Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled
To music suddenly.
In later life she had the poem by heart, and I venture to say that there
was not a word of it that she did not understand, both intellectually
and emotionally. But though she loved books and literature, it must not
be supposed that she was indifferent to other forms of art. Anything
beautiful in nature or art made a profound impression upon her. When
Leaker first went to Paris, on our way to Pau or Cannes, I forget which,
my mother sent her to the Louvre and told her specially to look at the
Venus of Milo. She gave her directions where to find the statue; when
she came back, she said to my mother:
I couldn't find the statue you told me about, but I saw another which is
the most lovely thing in the world. I never thought to see anything so
beautiful, and the broken arm did not matter at all, for she stood there
like a goddess.
She had found the Venus for herself, although some fault in the
directions had made her feel sure that it could not be what she had been
sent to look at. Later on, when we took to going to France regularly for
my mother's health, she every year did her homage to the Venus. What is
more, when she went for the first time to Florence, she fully realised
how poor a thing the Venus de Medici was in comparison.
But though, as I have said, all beautiful things appealed to her,
literature was her first love and the element in which she lived. But
literature did not in her case only mean Shakespeare, Milton, and the
Bible, as it does to so many English people. She cropped all the flowers
in the fields of literature, prose and verse. She was as intense an
admirer of Shakespeare as was my father, and a greater lover of Milton.
Shakespeare she lived on, including, curiously enough, _Timon of
Athens_, who was a great favourite. When any lazy member of my family
wanted to find a particular line or passage in Shakespeare, he or she
would go to Leaker rather than trouble to look up the quotation in a
concordance; Leaker was certain to find you at once what you wanted.
There was no pedantry about her and no mere _tour de force_ of the
memory. She entered into the innermost mental recesses of Shakespeare's
characters. What is more, she made us children follow her.
Though we were kept clean and well looked after, there was no nonsense
in her nursery as to over-exciting our minds or emotions, or that sort
of thing. She was quite prepared to read us to sleep with the witches in
_Macbeth_, or the death-scene in _Othello_. I can remember now
the exaltation derived, half from the mesmerism of the verse and half
from a pleasant terror, by her rendering of the lines: "Put out the
light, and then put out the light." I see her now, with her wrinkled
brown face, her cap with white streamers awry over her black hair
beginning to turn grey. In front of her was a book, propped up against
the rim of a tin candlestick shaped like a small basin. In it was a dip
candle and a pair of snuffers. That was how nursery light was provided
in the later 'sixties and even in the early 'seventies. As she sat bent
forward, declaiming the most soul-shaking things in Shakespeare between
nine and ten at night, we lay in our beds with our chins on the
counterpanes, silent, scared, but intensely happy. We loved every word,
and slept quite well when the play was finished. We were supposed to go
to sleep at nine, but if there was anything exciting in the play, very
little pressure was required to get Leaker to finish, even if it took an
extra half-hour--or a little more. In truth, she was always ready to
read to us by night or day.
Though no Sabbatarian, she had a tendency to give _Paradise Lost_ a
turn on Sundays. As far as I remember, she never read _Paradise
Regained_. _Comus_ and the short poems, especially _Lycidas_,
were great favourites with her. One might have supposed that she
would not like Wordsworth. As a matter of fact, she loved him and
thoroughly understood him and his philosophy of life. She did not
merely read the lyric and elegiac poems like _Ruth_, but had gone
through and enjoyed _The Excursion_ and many of the longer poems.
Coleridge she loved, and Southey, and Crabbe, and Gray, and Dr. Johnson,
and indeed the whole of English poetic literature. In modern poetry she
read freely Tennyson and Robert Browning, and admired them both.
Byron was a special favourite of hers, and here again she showed her
intellect and her taste, not by worshipping the Eastern Tales or the
sentimentalities of _Childe Harold_, but by a thorough appreciation
of _Don Juan_. Her taste, indeed, was almost unfailing. Take a
simple example. She used frequently to chant the delightful lines to Tom
Moore, which begin:
My boat is on the shore,
And my barque is on the sea,
But ere I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee.
Having a great deal of sympathy for scorn and indignation, she, of
course, loved the last verse and implanted it deeply in my mind by
constant quotation in tones of scathing intensity:
Here's a tear for those who love me,
And a smile for those who hate,
And whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
That was her own spirit. Truly she had a heart for every fate. She was
quite fearless.
Although she was not in the least a prejudiced person, I remember once,
in the excitement of my own discovery of Swinburne, trying to create an
equal enthusiasm in her mind. She returned me the book, however, without
enthusiasm and with the trenchant remark that it made her feel as if she
was in an overheated conservatory, too full of highly-scented flowers to
be pleasant! She was not in the least shocked by Swinburne, and if you
produced a good line or two you could win her approval, but the
atmosphere was not sympathetic. Of Rossetti she was a little more
tolerant, but she felt, I think, that there was not enough scope and
freedom.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the educational advantages of such a
nurse, and of having the very best part of English literature poured
into one's mouth almost with the nursery-bottle, and certainly with the
nursery mug. If my friends find me, as I fear they sometimes do, too
fond of making quotations, they must blame Mrs. Leaker, for when at her
best she threw quotations from the English Classics around her in a kind
of hailstorm. Some of the lines that had stuck in her mind were very
curious, though she had forgotten where they came from. One specially
amusing piece of Eighteenth-Century satirical verse I have never been
able to trace. Perhaps if I put it forth here I shall find out whence it
comes--very likely from some perfectly obvious source. The lines which
were used to calm us in our more grandiose and self-conceited moods ran
as follows:
Similes that never hit,
Vivacity that is not wit,
Schemes laid this hour, the next forsaken,
Advice oft asked, but never taken.
She had a couplet which she often produced when the newspapers came out
with some big social scandal or the coming to financial grief of some
great family name. On such occasions she would mutter to herself:
Debts and duns
And nothing for my younger sons.
Another verse, though I quote it not the least to show her literary
taste but because it was exceedingly characteristic of her, was in the
spring-time always on her lips:
The broom, the broom, the yellow broom,
The ancient poets sung it,
And sweet it is on summer days
To lie at ease among it.
I could fill a book, and perhaps some day I will do so, with Leaker's
reflections on men and things, and her epigrammatic sayings, and still
more with her wonderful old sea-stories, especially of the press-gang,
which she could almost remember in operation. Her father was, as she
always put it, "in the King's Navy," and he had been "bosun" to a ship's
"cap'n." He was at the Mutiny of the Nore, but was not a mutineer.
She was, however, full of stories about the Mutiny, which we found
extremely exciting. She used to sing, or rather "croon" to us some of
the mutineers' songs. One that I specially remember began with this
verse:
Parker was a gay young sailor,
Fortune to him did not prove kind;
He was hung for mutiny at the Nore,
Worse than him were left behind.
After declaiming that verse to us, she would add in low tones that made
one's blood run cold, "Men have been hung at the yardarm for singing
that song. It was condemned throughout the Fleet."
That in itself seems a link with the past, but through Leaker I had a
much more remarkable example of what, in spite of the smiles of the
statistician, fascinated us all. Leaker, when about the age of sixty,
brought her old mother, who was then ninety-four or ninety-five, to whom
she was devoted, to live in one of the cottages at Sutton, the year
being, as far as I can recollect, 1868 or 1869. I can distinctly recall
the old lady. She was very thin and faded, but with all her wits about
her, though weak and shy.
Leaker told us, with pride, that her mother, when she was a little girl,
had sat upon the knee of an old soldier who had fought at Blenheim. This
is quite possible. If old Mrs. Leaker was, as I think, only five years
short of a hundred in 1869, she could easily have been in the world at
the same time as a lad who had been at Blenheim in his eighteenth year.
Old Mrs. Leaker was, I calculated, born about 1774. She would therefore
have been six years old in 1780. But a man who was ninety-five in 1780
would have been born in 1685, and so twenty-nine in 1714, the year of
Blenheim. Possibly some historical calculator will despoil me of this
story. Meantime, I am always thrilled to think that I have seen a woman
who had seen a man who had been in action with the great Marlborough at
his greatest victory.
Before I leave my old nurse I must say something about a very curious
and interesting attempt which, at my request, she made at the end of her
life. It was to put down her recollections and reflections.
Unfortunately, I made this request rather too late, and so the result,
as a whole, was confused and often unintelligible. Still, the two little
MS. books which she wrote contain some very remarkable and
characteristic pieces of writing, and show the woman as she was.
Although in her day she had read plenty of autobiographies, she makes no
attempt to imitate them, or to write in a pedantic or literary style. As
far as she can, she shows us what she really was. Leaker's heart beats
against the sides of the little books just as I used to hear it when I
was a child in her arms, either in need of consolation, with toothache
or growing-pains, or else trying to give consolation, for she was often,
like all fierce people, melancholy and depressed after her own fierce
outbursts of anger.
Here is the very striking and characteristic exordium to her
autobiography:
I have not had an unpleasant life, although I was an old maid, and was a
servant for fifty years. I was a nurse and no mother could have loved
her children more than I loved those I nursed. I had three dear, good
mistresses, two of whom I left against their will.
The third and last was my mother, whom the old nurse outlived for many
years.
Here is her account of the miseries endured by the poor after Waterloo--
miseries which I often think of in these days, when I note the foolish,
the demented way in which we are approaching our economic difficulties
and dangers:
I am writing of the time a little after Waterloo. We were living at
Dartmouth. Everything was very dear. We lived mostly on barley bread. We
children were so used to it that we did not mind it, but my poor mother
could never eat it without repugnance, and we always tried to make her
get white bread, not knowing that she could not properly afford it. Many
a time (so she told me in after-years) she made her supper off a turnip
rather than let her children go hungry to bed. The cheapest sugar was
then tenpence a pound, and the very cheapest tea quite as much as five
shillings, but what I had to get for my mother was in very small
quantities. We children never had it, nor, as far as I remember, cared
for it. It was a treat when we could get milk to dip our bread in.
But though their poverty was so dire it did not kill the girl's joy in
life or, wonderful to say, in literature:
Though we were very poor, my childhood seems pleasant to me as I look
back, for my mother did all she could to make us happy. She went out
sewing very often, and we were glad she should go, for she got better
food than she could get at home, and what was, I believe, as much good
to her, she sometimes got food for her mind. But, poor dear, she was
always having a struggle with her conscience, and her love of what is
called light reading, as being a Methodist she thought it wrong to read
such books. She told me that when she was married she was given a new
edition of all the Elizabethan plays, twenty-five volumes, beautifully
bound. (I heard afterwards that a new edition was published at that
time.) However, about the year 1818 she thought it right to burn them,
although she was so fond of them. Yet when I was sitting at work with
her she would tell me tales out of the plays. How vexed I used to be
with her for burning them, poor dear loving mother! She taught me to
read out of my father's large old Bible, and the Apocrypha was a book of
wonder to me. She was fond of Young's _Night Thoughts_. Milton she
read often; my father gave it to her; poor man, he thought it would
please her. He was a sweet-tempered man, easy and kindhearted, but not
clever like my mother. He once said to her when she laughed at him for
some blunders, "Well, my dear, what can the woman with five talents
expect from the man with one?"
Leaker had plenty of stories of the press-gang. Though she never herself
saw it in operation, people not very much older told her of how they
were "awakened in the night by people crying out that they had been
taken."
Her mother, too, used to tell her heartrending stories about these
times.
"I can hardly even now bear to think of the dreadful things done by the
press-gang in the name of the law. I never hated the French as I hated
them."
Needless to say, I inherited her hatred of the press-gang, and have
maintained it all my life. It was the very worst and most oppressive
form of national service ever invented, and I think with pride that my
collateral ancestor, Captain George St. Loe (_temp_. William &
Mary) was the first man in England who urged in his writings that the
only fair way of making the nation secure was compulsory universal
service.
Leaker's mother was early in her married life converted to Methodism.
Some of her reflections on the smuggling that went on in and around the
little Devonshire port give the lie to those foolish, ignorant, and
shameless people who allege that because people are poor they cannot be
expected to have any idea of what is called conventional morality in
regard to "mine and thine." They will naturally and excusably, it is
asserted, break any law, moral or divine.
That is not how it struck Leaker's mother:
There was a good deal of smuggling going on in the town when I was a
girl, and one day a member of my mother's chapel brought some gay things
for her to buy. Oh, how I did long for her to get me a pretty
neckerchief, but she said, "No, my dear, I cannot buy it for you, as I
do not see any difference in cheating a single man or a government of
men. I believe that in the sight of God both are equally sinful."
Leaker says of her mother, "She had a large share of romance, and loved
a tale of witches, or a love-story"--and so did her daughter. The
supernatural gained fresh interest from her skilful story-telling, and
the art of the _raconteur_ still lives in her pages. Here is one of
the best of her stories. Even now it gives a delightful sense of fear:
This story was told me by the mother of a friend of mine--Mrs. Jackson
was her name, a ladylike woman, but who appeared to me to be very old
when I was a girl. Her husband was sailing master on board a man-of-war,
and this is what took place once when she was on board with him. They
were in port, and there was a large party of friends and officers
spending the evening on the ship, when a sudden storm arose, and no one
could go on shore. They were going to amuse themselves with music, and a
violin was brought, but a string broke before the instrument had been
touched. "Never mind," said the captain, "I have a man on board who is a
first-rate hand at deceiving the sight." Everyone was pleased at the
idea of conjuring, and the man was sent for, and asked to show some of
his tricks; but he said, "No, I can't tonight, as it is not a good
time." Said the captain, "What is to hinder you?" "Well, sir, I do not
like doing it this stormy weather." "That is all stuff and nonsense,"
replied the captain; "you must try. Come, set to work." So the man asked
for a chafing dish, which was brought to him. There was a fire of
charcoal in it. He said and did something (Mrs. Jackson did not tell us
what), and after a while there appeared in the dish, coming out of the
fire, a tiny tree, with a tiny man holding a hatchet. The tree seemed to
grow from the bottom, and the little man chopped at it all the time. The
performing man was greatly agitated, and asked one of the ladies to lend
him her apron (ladies wore them in those days). Mrs. Jackson took off
hers and handed it to him. He tied it on, and ran round the table on
which the chafing-dish stood, catching the chips, and apparently in
great alarm lest one of them should fall to the ground. She used to say
it was painful to see the poor man's agony of fear. While this was going
on the storm grew much worse, so that the people on board were afraid
that the ship would be driven from her anchorage. At last the tree fell
under the tiny man's hatchet, and nothing was left on the table but the
chafing-dish. The conjuror gave back the apron, and then, turning to the
captain, said, "Never from this night will I do what I have done
tonight. You may believe me or not, but if one of those chips had fallen
to the ground, nothing could have saved the ship, and everyone on board
would have gone down with her."
When the old lady told this story she would say that she had distinctly
seen the chips fly, and heard the noise of the chopping. She used to
show the apron, which she never wore again, but kept, carefully put
away, to be shown to anyone who liked to see it.
Can one wonder that the little man with his little axe and the little
tree, and the unknown peril of death that came up from the sea, made a
deep impression upon my mind, though not in any sense a haunting or
unpleasant one? I longed to see the chips fly and the tiny tree bow to
the sturdy strokes of the weird woodman.
Leaker's stories of ordinary witchcraft were many and curious, and
though they cannot be set out here I must quote one or two lines in
regard to them:
I do not think there was a place in the land so full of witches, white
and black, as Dartmouth. My mother was, for her time and station, pretty
fairly educated, yet she seemed to me to believe in them firmly.
The autobiography shows that when she was sitting alone, thinking and
writing, the old nurse felt acutely the solitude and weariness of an old
age that had outlived contemporaries as well as bodily faculties. When,
however, the friends of another generation were with her, she never
seemed too tired or too sad to enter keenly into all the interests of
their lives. After a hopeful consultation with an oculist she writes:
Is it not strange, that when the most terrible trouble is a little
better, what looked light in comparison with want of sight comes back as
heavily as ever? How I wish I could be more thankful for the mercies I
have and not be always longing for the unattainable.
Everyone who has lived through a great crisis has probably shared the
old nurse's surprise at finding that smaller troubles, which for a while
were reduced to nothingness, soon revive with our own return to ordinary
life.
However [as she says] I will not go into reflections, but write of my
young days. How all these things come back to me, a lone old woman who
longs for, and yet is afraid of death. If I could only be sure, be sure!
Is it possible there is no other state of being? Oh, God, it is too
dreadful to think of.
Then she would turn to _Paradise Lost_, and how often have we not
heard her repeat the lines:
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me,
opens wide, finding, as Aristotle would have said, relief and even
comfort in the "purgation" through poetry, of the passions of pity and
terror.
I will end my account of Leaker with one of her memories of happier
moods in which we can feel the magic of spring laying hold on the vivid
imagination of the bright-eyed Devonshire girl:
One early spring day I heard my eldest brother tell my mother that he
had seen a primrose. She said, "Do not tell Salome, for if she knows
there will be no keeping her at home." But I had heard, and that was
enough. Early next morning away I went, rambling all day from field to
field, picking primroses. First a handful of the common yellow ones,
then some coloured ones, and did ever a Queen prize jewels as I did
those coloured flowers? But the joy in them only lasted a little while.
I would next see some white ones, and then the coloured ones were thrown
away, and I would set to work to gather the pale ones. Oh, how beautiful
they looked! I can see them now, and almost feel the rapture I felt
then. It makes me young again--almost. My dear mother used to say, "What
do you do with all the flowers you pick? You never bring any home." I do
not know what I did with them, but the joy of picking them was beyond
expression. Have I ever felt such joy or happiness since?
CHAPTER IX
BOYHOOD: POETRY AND METRE
If I am to be exact, this chapter should have the sub-title of "Poetry
and Metre," for poetry, other people's and my own, and an impassioned
study of the metrical art, were the essential things about my boyhood.
Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, at which time I may be said to
have become grown-up, Poetry was my life.
My schoolboy period was not passed by me at school, except a term and a
half at an excellent private school--one which still flourishes--the
MacLaren School at Summertown. Rather reluctantly, for he was horrified
by the bullying and cruelty which went on during his own day at English
schools, my father consented to my mother's desire that we should go to
school. After he had taken many precautions, and had ascertained that
there was no bullying at Summertown, my elder brother and I were
despatched to the school in question.
I was quite happy, got on well with the schoolmasters and with Mrs.
MacLaren, the clever Scotswoman who ran the school, and gave
satisfaction in everything except learning. In this matter I developed
an extraordinary power of resistance, partly due, no doubt, to my bad
eyesight. I was pronounced, in reports, to be a boy who gave no trouble
and who was always happy and contented, and appeared to have good
brains, and yet who, somehow or other, was easily surpassed at work by
boys with inferior mental capacity.
My schoolfellows, I believe, thought me odd; but I made friends easily,
and kept them. Though I could be "managed" by anyone who wanted to get
something out of me, I was never put upon or bullied, because if
attempts were made to coerce me, I was, like the immortal Mr. Micawber,
not disinclined for a scrap. I stood erect before my fellow-boy, and
when he tried to bully me I punched his head. Mr. Micawber's comment is
too moving not to be recorded. "I and my fellow-man no longer meet upon
those glorious terms." I and my fellow-schoolboy did occasionally meet
upon those glorious terms, greatly to my enjoyment.
It happened, however, that there was an outbreak of scarlet fever in the
school, and my father became anxious, and removed us at once--somewhat,
I think, to my regret, but probably for my good. It was ultimately
decided that my brother and I, instead of returning to MacLaren's,
should, as I have already mentioned, go to the house of a clergyman, Mr.
Philpott, who was the vicar of a neighbouring village, Chewton Mendip.
The Vicarage was close to Chewton Priory, the house of my mother's
closest friend, Lady Waldegrave.
Though Mr. Philpott was not an educational expert, in the modern sense,
he was a man of good parts, fond of the arts, and something of a man of
the world. His wife was a woman of great nobility of character and also
of considerable mental power. She combined the qualities of a self-
sacrificing and devoted mother with a certain ironic, or even sardonic,
touch. She was a daughter of Mr. Tattersall, the owner of Tattersall's
sale-rooms, and at her father's house she had become acquainted in the
latter part of the 'fifties and the early 'sixties with all the great
sporting characters of that epoch. Of these she used to tell us boys
plenty of strange and curious anecdotes.
Chewton Mendip was only seven miles from Sutton, and so while there we
were in constant touch with our own home life. We had also the amusement
of seeing my father and mother when they went over, as they often did,
to dine and sleep, or stay for longer visits, at the Priory. Lady
Waldegrave was a great entertainer, and the house was thronged, not only
with her country neighbours but with numbers of smart people from
London--people such as Hayward, Bagehot, Lord Houghton, on the literary
side, and men like Sir Walter Harcourt on the political. Again,
picturesque figures in the European world, such as the Comte de Paris,
the Due d'Aumale, were often guests, and there were always members of
the Foreign Embassies and Legations. For example, it was at the Priory
that I first saw a real alive American, in the shape of General Schenk,
the United States Minister to the Court of St. James. I remember well
his teaching the whole houseparty to play poker--a game till then quite
unknown in England.
It was in the interval between leaving school and going to Chewton to
the Philpotts that I began to read poetry for myself. Before, I had only
loved it through my father's and Leaker's reading to us from
Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Spenser, Coleridge, Southey, and the old
Ballads. When, however, I discovered that I could read poetry for
myself, I tore the heart out of every book in the library that was in
verse. Though my parents would have thought it an unforgivable crime to
keep books from a child of theirs, for some reason or other I used to
like in the summer-time to get up at about five or six o'clock (I was
not a very good sleeper in those days, though I have been a perfect
sleeper ever since), dress myself, run through the silent, sleeping
house, and hide in the Great Parlour. There in absolute quietness and
with a great sense of grandeur I got out my Byron or my Shelley, and
raced though their pages in a delirium of delight. I can recall still,
and most vividly, the sunlight streaming into the Great Parlour window,
as I opened the great iron-sheathed shutters. Till breakfast-time I
lolled on the big sofa, mouthing to myself explosive couplets from
_Don Juan_. I am proud to say that, though I liked, as a boy
should, the sentimentalism of the stanzas which begin
'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark
I was equally delighted with
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
The unexpected death of some old lady.
The ironic mixture of emotion and sarcasm fascinated me.
No sooner were Byron, Shelley, and Keats explored than I fell tooth and
nail upon Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti, and every other possible poet
of my generation. I forget the exact date on which I became enamoured of
the Elizabethan dramatists, but it was some time between fourteen and
sixteen, and when I did catch the fever, it was severe.
As everyone ought to do under such circumstances, I thought, or
pretended to think, that Marlowe, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson,
Webster, and Ford were the equals, if not indeed the superiors, of
Shakespeare.
That was a view with which my father by no means agreed, but with his
kindly wisdom he never attempted to condemn or dispute my opinions. He
left me to find out the true Shakespeare for myself. This I ultimately
did, and ended by being what, as a rule, is wrong in literature, but, I
think, right in the case of Shakespeare, a complete idolater.
But though hand-in-hand with Charles Lamb I wandered through the Eden of
the Elizabethan playwrights, I by no means neglected the Eighteenth
Century. Quite early I became a wholehearted devotee of Pope and at once
got the _Ode to the Unfortunate Lady_ by heart. I dipped into
_The Rape of the Lock_, gloried in the Moral Essays, especially in
the _Characters of Women_ and the epistle to Bathurst on the use of
riches. Gray, who was a special favourite of Leaker's, soon became a
favourite of mine, and I can still remember how I discovered the _Ode
to Poesy_ and how I went roaring its stanzas through the house. Such
lines as
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathes around
or
Hark, his hands the lyre explore,
were meat and drink to me. The _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_
quickly seized my memory.
Nobody could avoid knowing when I had made a poetic discovery. I was as
noisy as a hen that has laid an egg, or, to be more exact, I felt and
behaved like a man who has come into a fortune. For me there were no
coteries in Literature, or if there were, I belonged to them all. If I
heard somebody say that there were good lines in the poems of some
obscure author or other, I did not rest satisfied till I had got hold of
his _Complete Works_. For example, when Crabbe was spoken of, I ran
straight to _The Tales of the Hall_ and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I even tasted _The Angel in the House_ when I heard that Rossetti
and Ruskin, and even Swinburne, admired Coventry Patmore. Though largely
disappointed, I even extracted honey from _The Angel_, though I
confess it was rather like a bee getting honey out of the artificial
flowers in the case in a parlour window. Still, if I could only find two
lines that satisfied me, I thought myself amply rewarded for the trouble
of a search. It is still a pleasure to repeat
And o'er them blew
The authentic airs of Paradise.
I felt, I remember, about the epithet "authentic" what Pinkerton in
_The Wrecker_ felt about Hebdomadary--"You're a boss word."
I have no recollection of what made me take to writing verse myself. It
was the old story. "I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." My first
lisp--the first poem I ever wrote--of all the odd things in the world
was a diminutive satire in the style of Pope. Throughout my boyhood I
was an intense romanticist, and full of Elizabethan fancies, imaginings.
and even melancholies--I use the word, of course, in the sense of
Burton, or of Shakespeare. Yet all the time I read masses of Pope. The
occasion for my satire was one which must be described as inevitable in
the case of one eager to try his hand at imitations of Pope. By this I
mean that the satiric outburst was not provoked by any sort of anger. I
merely found in some of the circumstances of the life around me good
copy. One of the things I liked particularly in Pope was the Epistle
describing the Duke of Chandos's house, the poem which begins--
At Timon's villa let us pass a day,
Where all cry out what sums are thrown away.
And there, straight in front of me, was the Priory, Lady Waldegrave's
grandiose country-house. I heard plenty of criticism of the house. Its
nucleus was a Carpenter's Gothic villa, built originally by a Dean of
Wells, bought by Lord Waldegrave in the 'thirties or 'forties, and then
gradually turned by Frances, Lady Waldegrave, into a big country-house,
but a house too big for the piece of ground in which it was set. The
skeleton of the roadside villa was alleged by the local critics to show
through the swelling flesh that overlaid it. Here was a chance for the
satirist, and so I sharpened my pencil and began:
Oh, stones and mortar by a Countess laid
In sloping meadows by a turnpike glade,--
A Gothic mansion where all arts unite
To form a home for Baron, Earl or Knight.
The rest is lost! Considering that I was only twelve, and that Pope was
little read by the youth of the 'seventies, my couplets may fairly claim
to be recognised as a literary curiosity.
It is hardly necessary to say that the moment I found I could write, and
that metre and rhyme were no difficulty to me, I went at it tooth and
nail. The more I wrote the more interested did I become in metre, and it
is not too much to say that within a couple of years from my first
attempt, that is by the time I was about fourteen and a half, I had
experimented not only in most of the chief measures, but in almost all
the chief stanzas used by the English poets. To these, indeed, I added
some of my own devising. In this way Prosody early became for me what it
has always been, a source of pleasure and delight in itself. I liked
discovering metrical devices in the poets, analysing them, _i.e._
discovering the way the trick worked, and in making experiments for
myself. The result of this activity was that I had soon written enough
verse to make a little pamphlet. With this pamphlet in my pocket and
without consultation with anybody--the young of the poets are as shy as
the young of the salmon--I trudged off to Wells, the county town, five
miles distant across Mendip. How I discovered the name of the local
printer I do not know, but I did discover it, and with beating heart
approached his doors. After swearing him to secrecy, I asked for an
estimate. He was a sympathetic man, and named a price which even then
seemed to me low, and which was in reality so small that it would be
positively unsafe to name to a master-printer nowadays.
As far as I remember, I did not receive a proof, but my delight at
seeing my verses come back in print was beyond words. I remember, too,
that I received a flattering note from my first publisher, prophesying
success for future poetic ventures. But, though very happy, I believe,
and am indeed sure, that I did not entertain any idea that I was going
to become a poet. Possibly I thought the trade was a bad one for a
second son who must support himself. It is more probable that I
instinctively felt that although it was so great a source of joy to me,
poetry was not my true vocation. Perhaps, also, I had already begun to
note the voice of pessimism raised by the poets of the 'seventies, and
to feel that they did not believe in themselves. I distinctly remember
that Tennyson's "Is there no hope for modern rhyme?" was often on my
lips and in my mind. His question distinctly expected the answer "No."
It is little wonder, then, that I did not want to be a poet, and I never
envisaged myself as a Byron, a Shelley, or a Keats.
The thing that strikes me most, on looking back at my little volume of
verse, is its uncanny competence, not merely from the point of view of
prosody, but of phraseology and what I may almost term scholarship. The
poems did not show much inspiration, but they are what 18th-century
critics would have called "well-turned." That would not be astonishing,
in the case of a boy who had been well-educated and had acquired the art
of expression. But I had not been well-educated. Owing to my ill-health
my teachers had not been allowed to press me, and I was in a sense quite
illiterate. I could hardly write, I could not spell at all, and nobody
had ever pruned my budding fancies or shown me how to transfer thoughts
to language, as one is shown, or ought to be shown, when one learns the
Greek and Latin grammars and attacks Latin prose or Latin verse. My
teaching in this direction had been more than sketchy. The only
schoolroom matter in which I had made any advance was mathematics.
Euclid and algebra fascinated me. I felt for them exactly what I felt
for poetry. Though I did not know till many years afterwards that when
Pythagoras discovered the forty-seventh proposition he sacrificed a yoke
of oxen, not to Pallas Athene but to the Muses, I was instinctively
exactly of his opinion. I can remember to this day how I worked out the
proof of the forty-seventh proposition with Mr. Battersby, a young
Cambridge man who was curate to Mr. Philpott and who took us on in
mathematics. The realisation of the absolute, unalterable fact that in
every right-angled triangle the square of the side subtending it is
equal to the squares of the sides containing it, filled me with the kind
of joy and glory that one feels on reading for the first time Keats's
_Ode to a Nightingale_ or one of the great passages in Shakespeare.
I saw the genius of delight unfold his purple wing. I was transfigured
and seemed to tread upon air. For the first time in my life I realised
the determination of an absolute relationship. A great window had been
opened before my eyes. I saw all things new. My utter satisfaction could
not be spoiled by feeling, as one does in the case of the earlier
propositions of Euclid, that I had been proving what I knew already--
something about which I could have made myself sure by the use of a
foot-rule or a tape-measure. I had acquired knowledge, by an act of pure
reasoning and not merely through the senses. I felt below my feet a
rock-bed foundation which nothing could shake. Come what might, a^2 =
b^2 + c^2. No one could ever deprive me of that priceless possession.
At that time I did not see or dream of the connection which no doubt
does exist between mathematics and poetry--the connection which made the
wise Dryden say that every poet ought to be something of a
mathematician. Needless to say, my teachers did not see the connection.
They were simply amazed that the same person should become as drunk with
geometry and algebra as with poetry. Probably they consoled themselves
by the thought that I was one of the people who could persuade
themselves into believing anything!
It is of importance to record my precocity in the use of measured
language, from the point of view of the growth of my mind. It will, I
think, also amuse those of my readers who have written poetry for
themselves in their youth (that, I suppose, is the case with most of us)
to observe my hardihood in the way of metrical experiment. Here is the
Invocation to the Muses which served as an Introduction to my little
book. It will be noted that I have here tried my hand at my favourite
measure, the dactylic. Towards anapaests I have always felt a certain
coldness, if not indeed repulsion.
TO THE MUSES
(1874)
Come to my aid, Muses love-laden, lyrical:
Come to my aid, Comic, Tragic, Satirical.
Come and breathe into me
Strains such as swept from Keats' heaven-strung lyre,
Strains such as Shelley's, which never can tire.
Come then, and sing to me,
Sing me an ode such as Byron would sing,
Passionate, love-stirring, quick to begin.
Why come you not to me?
Then must I write lyrics after vile rules
Made by some idiot, used by worse fools--
Then the deuce take you all!
(Ætat. 14.)
I have to thank Mr. Edmund Gosse for inspiring this attempt. I hope he
will forgive even if he does not forget. I had made a shopping
expedition into Bristol, and went to tea or luncheon at Clifton Hill
House where lived my mother's brother, John Addington Symonds. It
happened that Mr. Gosse was a visitor at the house on the day in
question, and that to my great delight we all talked poetry. I saw my
chance, and proceeded to propound to these two authorities the following
question: "Why is it that nobody has ever written an English poem in
pure dactyls?" Greatly to my surprise and joy, Mr. Gosse informed me
that it had been done. Thereupon he quoted the first four lines of what
has ever since been a favourite poem of mine, Waller's lines to Hylas:
Hylas, O Hylas! why sit we mute,
Now that each bird saluteth the spring?
Tie up the slackened strings of thy lute,
Never may'st thou want matter to sing.
I hope I am not quoting incorrectly, but it is nearly fifty years since
I saw the poem and at the moment I have not got a Waller handy. With the
exactitude of youth I verified Mr. Gosse's quotation the moment I got
home. I took my poetry very seriously in those days. I rushed to the
Great Parlour, and though then quite indifferent to such a material
thing as fine printing, I actually found the poem in one of
Baskerville's exquisite productions.
The poem next to my dactylic Introduction was a dramatic lyric, partly
blank verse and partly rhymed choruses, in the Swinburne manner. In my
poem the virtuous and "misunderstood" Byron is pursued and persecuted by
the spirits of Evil, Hypocrisy, Fraud, and Tyranny, but is finally
redeemed by the Spirit of Good, whose function it is to introduce the
triumphant poet to Shelley.
There follows another dramatic lyric on Shelley's death, which takes the
form of the death-bed confession to his priest of an old sailor at
Spezzia. The old man, according to a story published in 1875, was one of
the crew of a small ship which ran down the boat containing Shelley and
Williams, under the mistaken impression that the rich "milord Byron" was
on board, with lots of money. Here the style is more that of Browning
than of Swinburne. A few lines are quite sufficient to show the sort of
progress I was making in blank verse.
What noise of feet is that? Ah, 'tis the priest.
Here, priest, I have a sin hangs heavy. See
There by the fishing-nets that lovely youth,
I killed him--oh, 'twas fifty years ago,
Only, tonight he will not let me rest,
But looks with loving eyes, making me fear.
Oh, Father, 'twas not him I meant to kill,
'Twas the rich lord I coveted to rob,
He with the bright wild eyes and haughty mien.
Imitation of Browning was by no means a passing mood with me. A year
before I tackled my Shelley and Byron poems, I had written a piece of
imitation Browningese which is not without its stock of amusement,
considering what was to be the fate of the versifier.
JEAN DUVAL'S LAST WORDS
Jean Duval has presented himself at a Paris newspaper office, asking for
employment; this being refused him he makes a last request, offering to
sell his muse, which he had hoped to keep unhired. This also being
refused, his want of bread overcomes him, and he curses the Editor and
dies.
A plague on all gold, say I,
I who must win it, or die.
Here goes, I'll sell my Muse.
You may buy her for twenty sous.
No, I'll write by the ream,
Only give me your theme,
And a sou more for a light
To put in my garret at night.
Garret!--ah, I was forgetting,
My present's a very cheap letting
Under the prison wall,
Just where it grows so tall.
Why don't I steal, you say?
Oh, I wasn't brought up that way.
Will you give me the twenty sous?
Come, it isn't much to lose.
You won't? Then I die. Ah, well,
God will find you a lodging in hell.
(_Ætat_. 14.)
The melancholy which belongs to the young poet, a melancholy which had
to be feigned in my case, was reserved for sonnets of a somewhat
antinomian type. Here is an example.
SONNET
(1875)
O why so cruel, ye that have left behind
Life's fears, and from draped death have drawn the veil?
Oh, why so cruel? Does life or death avail?
Why tell us not?--why leave us here so blind,
To tread this earth, not sure that we may find
Even an end beyond this worldly pale
Of petty hates and loves so weak and frail?
O why not speak?--is it so great a thing
To cross death's stream and whisper in the ear
Of us weak mortals some faint hope or cheer?
Or tell us, dead ones, if the hopes that spring
From joyous hours when all seems bright and clear
Have any truth. O speak, ye dead, and say
If that in hope of dying, live we may.
(_Ætat_. 15.)
A metrical essay of which I am more proud is a poem written at the end
of 1874, or possibly at the beginning of 1875. With a daring which now
seems to me incredible I undertook to write in that most difficult of
measures, the Spenserian stanza. The matter of the composition is by no
means memorable, but I think I have a right to congratulate myself upon
the fact that I was able at that age to manage the triple rhymes and the
twelve-syllable line at the end of each stanza without coming a complete
cropper. I could not do it now, even if my life depended on it.
TO THE POWERS OF SONG
I
Spirit, whose harmony doth fill the mind,
Deign now to hear the wailing of a song
That lifts to thee its voice, and strives to find
Aught that may raise it from the servile throng
Who seek on earth but living to prolong.
For them no goddess, no fair poets reign,
They hear no singing, as the earth along
They move to their dull tasks; they live, they wane,
They die, and dying, not a thought of thee retain.
II
Thou art the Muse of whom the Grecian knew,
The power that reigneth in each loving heart;
From thee the sages their great teachings drew.
Thou mak'st life tuneful by the poet's art.
Without thy aid the love-god's fiery dart
Wakes but a savage and a blind desire,
Where nought of beauty e'er can claim a part.
Without thee, all to which frail men aspire
Has nothing good, is but of this poor earth, no higher.
III
Unhappy they who wander without light,
And know thee not, thou goddess of sweet life;
Cursed are they all that live not in thy sight,
Cursed by themselves they cannot drown the strife
In thee, of passion, of the ills so rife
On earth; they have no star, no hope, no love,
To guide them in the stormy ways of life;
They are but as the beasts who slowly move
On the world's face, nor care to look for light above.
IV
I am not as these men; I look for light,
But none appears, no rays for me are flung.
I would not be with those that sit in night;
I fain would be that glorious host among,
That band of poets who have greatly sung.
But woe, alas, I cannot, I no power
Of singing have, all my tired heart is wrung
To think I might have known a happier hour,
And sung myself, not let my aching spirit cower.
(_Ætat_. 14.)
A bad poem, though interesting from the number of poets mentioned, is a
satiric effort entitled _The Examination_. It supposes that all the
living poets have been summoned by Apollo to undergo a competitive
examination. The bards, summoned by postcards, which had just then been
introduced, repair to Parnassus and are shown to the Hall. Rossetti and
Morris, however, make a fuss because the paper is not to their taste.
Walt Whitman, already a great favourite of mine, "though spurning a
jingle," is hailed as "the singer of songs for all time." Proteus
(Wilfrid Blount) is mentioned, for my cult for him was already growing.
Among other poets who appear, but who have since died to fame, are Lord
Lytton, Lord Southesk, Lord Lome, Mrs. Singleton, and Martin Tupper. In
the end Apollo becomes "fed up" with his versifiers, and dismisses them
all with the intimation that any who have passed will receive printed
cards. The curtain is rung down with the gloomy couplet:
Six months have elapsed, but no poet or bard,
So far as I know, has yet got a card
Another set of verses, written between the ages of fourteen and fifteen,
which are worth recalling from the point of view of metre include some
English hexameters. I was inspired to write them by an intense
admiration of Clough's _Amours de Voyage_, an admiration which
grows greater, not lesser, with years.
As I have started upon the subject of verse, I think I had better pursue
the course of the stream until, as the old geographers used to say about
the Rhine, its waters were lost in the sands, in my case not of Holland
but of Prose.
From 1877 to the time when I actually entered Balliol, at eighteen and a
half, I went on writing verse, and was fortunate enough to get one or
two pieces published. Besides two sonnets which were accepted by _The
Spectator_--sonnets whose only _raison d'être_ was a certain
competence of expression--was a poem entitled _Love's Arrows_,
which was accepted, to my great delight, by Sir George Grove, then the
Editor of _Macmillan's Magazine_, a periodical given up to
_belles-lettres_. The poem may be best described as in the Burne
Jones manner. I shall not, however, quote any part of it, except the
prose introduction, which I still regard with a certain enthusiasm as a
successful fake. It ran as follows:
At a league's distance from the town of Ponteille in Provence and hard
by the shrine of Our Lady of Marten, there is in the midst of verdant
meadows a little pool, overshadowed on all sides by branching oak-trees,
and surrounded at the water's edge by a green sward so fruitful that in
spring it seemeth, for the abundance of white lilies, as covered with
half-melted snow. Unto this fair place a damsel from out a near village
once came to gather white flowers for the decking of Our Lady's chapel;
and while so doing saw lying in the grass a naked boy; in his hair were
tangled blue waterflowers, and at his side lay a bow and marvellously
wrought quivers of two arrows, one tipped at the point with gold, the
other with lead. These the damsel, taking up the quiver, drew out; but
as she did so the gold arrow did prick her finger, and so sorely that,
starting at the pain, she let fall the leaden one upon the sleeping boy.
He at the touch of that arrow sprang up, and crying against her with
much loathing, fled over the meadows. She followed him to overtake him,
but could not, albeit she strove greatly; and soon, wearied with her
running, fell upon the grass in a swoon. Here had she lain, had not a
goatherd of those parts found her and brought her to the village. Thus
was much woe wrought unto the damsel, for after this she never again
knew any joy, nor delighted in aught, save only it were to sit waiting
and watching among the lilies by the pool. By these things it seemeth
that the boy was not mortal, as she supposed, but rather the Demon or
Spirit of Love, whom John of Dreux for his two arrows holdeth to be that
same Eros of Greece.--MSS. _Mus. Aix. B._ 754. Needless to say,
it was a pure invention and not a copy, or travesty of an old model. I
was egregiously proud of the scription at the end which, if I remember
rightly, my father helped me to concoct. A certain interest has always
attached in my mind to this piece of prose. To read it one would imagine
that the author had closely studied the translations of Morris and other
Tenderers of the French romances, but as far as I know I had not read
any of them. The sole inspiration of my forgery were a few short
references in Rossetti and Swinburne. This shows that in the case of
literary forgeries one need not be surprised by verisimilitudes, and
that it is never safe to say that a literary forger could not have done
this or that. If he happens to have a certain flair for language and the
tricks of the literary trade, he can do a wonderful amount of forgery
upon a very small stock of knowledge. After all, George Byron forged
Sonnets by Keats which took in Lord Houghton--a very good judge in the
case of Keats.
CHAPTER X
OXFORD
My introduction to Oxford and its life was somewhat chaotic. Out of that
chaos, as I shall show later, I achieved both good and evil. But I must
first explain how the chaos arose. By the time I had reached seventeen
it had become obvious to my father--or, rather, to the people at the
University, who so advised him--that if I was to be able to matriculate
at Balliol I must set my intellectual house in order and learn something
of the things upon which alone one could matriculate. The irony of
accident had designed my mental equipment to be of a kind perfectly
useless for the purposes of the preliminary Oxford examinations. It was
no doubt true that I knew enough poetry and general literature to
confound half the Dons in Balliol. I also knew enough mathematics, as,
to my astonishment, a mathematical tutor at Oxford in an unguarded hour
confessed to me, to enable me to take a First in Mathematical Mods. But
knowledge of literature, a power of writing, a not inconsiderable
reading in modern history, and the aforesaid mathematics were no use
whatever for the purposes of matriculation.
In those days Latin and Greek Grammar, Latin Prose and "Latin and Greek
Unseen," and certain specially-prepared Greek and Latin Books were
essentials. It is true that these alone would not have matriculated me.
In addition to them the writing of a good essay and of a good general
paper were required, to obtain success. Still, the _sine qua non_
was what the representative of the old Oxford in Matthew Arnold's
_Friendship's Garland_ calls "the good old fortifying classical
curriculum." I could by no possibility have reached the heights of
"Hittal," who, it will be remembered, wrote "some longs and shorts about
the Caledonian boar which were not bad." Though English verses came so
easily, Latin verses did not come at all.
After many family councils it was decided that I should accept the
invitation of my uncle and aunt (Professor T. H. Green and his wife) and
take up my residence with them in their house in St. Giles's. There I
read for Responsions. If it had not been for some extraordinary power of
resistance in the matter of Latin and Greek I ought to have found the
task easy, for, as I have said elsewhere, I had two of the most
accomplished scholars in the University to teach me. One was Mr. Henry
Nettleship, soon to become Regius Professor of Latin. The other was a
young Balliol man who had just won a Magdalen Fellowship and who was
destined to become President of that famous college over which he still
presides so worthily and so wisely. But, alas! I was Greek and Latin
proof, and all I really gained from my learned teachers was two very
close and intimate friends, and the privilege of meeting at the house of
the one and in the rooms in the College of the other, a good many of the
abler Dons, young and old, and getting on good terms with them. In the
same way, I used to see at my uncle's house the best of Oxford company,
and also a certain number of Cambridge men.
It must not be supposed, however, that I was not learning anything. I
was getting a priceless store of knowledge,
[Illustration: J St Loe Strachey. Ætat 16 (From a photograph done at
Cannes, about 1876.)] nay, wisdom from my uncle, who was kindness
itself and who was, I am sure, fond of me. He was almost as ready to
talk and to answer questions as my father. In him, too, I saw the
working of a great and good man and of a noble character.
Though in a different, but equally true, way, Green was as religious a
man as my father. If my father felt the personal relationship between
God and His children more than Green did, that was chiefly because
Green's mind could take nothing which had not the sanction of reason,
or, to be more accurate, of an intuition guarded so closely by Reason
that very little of the mystic element in Faith remained unchallenged.
No one could live with Green without loving him and feeling reverence
for his deep sincerity and his instinct for the good.
Though foolish people talked of him as a heretic, or even an infidel, he
was in truth one of the most devout of men. That noble passage in
Renan's play fits him exactly. The Almighty, conversing as in Job with
one of His Heavenly Ministers as to this Planet's people, says:
Apprends, enfant fidèle, ma tendresse pour ceux qui doutent ou qui
nient. Ces doutes, ces négations sont fondés en raison; ils viennent de
mon obstination à me cacher. Ceux qui me nient entrent dans mes vues.
Ils nient l'image grotesque ou abominable que l'on a mise en ma place.
Dans ce monde d'idolâtres et d'hypocrites, seuls, ils me respectent
réellement.
Understand, faithful child, my tenderness for those who doubt and who
deny. Those doubts, those denials are founded on reason; they come from
my obstinate resolve to hide myself. Those who deny me enter into my
plans. They deny the grotesque or abominable image which men have set up
in my place. In a world of idolators and hypocrites, they alone really
respect me.
But what I gained from my uncle and his friends, from Nettleship and
from Warren, and also from the people I used to meet at the house of my
great-uncle, Dr. Frederick Symonds, was not all that I achieved in the
year before I matriculated. The air of Oxford did not repress but
greatly stimulated my love of verse and _belles-lettres_, and I
careered over the green pastures of our poetry like the colt let loose
that I was. Elizabethan plays were at the moment my pet reading, and
without knowing it I emulated Charles James Fox, who is said while at
Oxford to have read a play a day--no doubt out of the Doddesley
collection. I even went to the Bodleian in search of the Elizabethans,
and remember to this day my delight in handling the big and little books
mentioned by Lamb in his Dramatic Selections. I recall how I turned over
the leaves of such enchanting works as Inigo Jones's designs for _The
Tempest_ played as a Masque. Though I do not happen to have seen it
since, and so speak with a forty years' interval, the pen-and-ink
drawing of Ariel, portrayed exactly like a Cinquecento angel, is fixed
in my mind. It has all the graciousness and gentleness of Bellini and
all the robust beauty of Veronese or Palma Vecchio. To tell the truth, I
was in the mood of the lady of the Island over which Prospero waved his
wand. I could say with Miranda, "O brave new world, that has such men
and women in it!" Indeed, though I still stood outside the gates, as it
were, I had already felt the subtle intoxication of Oxford.
The result of all this was that when I at last got through Responsions
and entered Balliol, with the understanding that directly I got through
Pass Mods. I was to abandon the Classics and read for the History
School, I knew, as it were, too much and too little. This knowledge of
some things and want of knowledge of others produced a result which was
highly distasteful to the normal academic mind. In a word, I was in the
position of Gibbon when he went up to Magdalen. His ignorance would have
astonished a schoolboy and his learning a professor, and no doubt he
seemed to the greater part of the High Table an odious and forward young
man.
All the same, and though no one then believed it, I was extraordinarily
innocent, if not as to my ignorance, as to my learning. When I met a Don
who, I was told, was "unsurpassed" in the Greek or Latin classics and
could probably appreciate them as well as if he had been a Greek or
Roman of the best period, I was tremendously excited. I felt sure that
being so highly endowed in this direction he could not possibly have
neglected English literature, and must know all about that also, and so
would be of the greatest help to me. I was inclined, therefore, to rush
at these scholars with the perfect assurance that I could get something
from them. When, however, they either evaded my questionings or told me
curtly that they had never heard of the people about whom I asked, I
felt sure that this was only said to get rid of me. For some reason
unknown to me I had managed, I felt, to offend them as Alice offended
the creatures in Wonderland.
I can recall a specific example. I found a certain learned scholar who
had never even heard of, and took no interest in, Marlowe's _Dido and
Æneas_, and could not be drawn into expressing an opinion as to
whether the translations were good or bad. In other cases I found that
even the names of men like Burton of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_
produced no reaction. Yet, wretched Latinist as I was, I had been
thunderstruck with delight when, rummaging the Cathedral after a Sunday
service, where, by the way, I heard Pusey preach his last sermon, I came
upon Burton's tomb, and read for the first time the immortal epitaph
which begins:
_Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus,_
I can see now that what I thought was the pretended ignorance of the
Dons, and their fastidious unwillingness to talk to an uneducated
schoolboy, as I believed myself to be, was nothing of the kind. I have
not the slightest doubt now that they regarded me as a cheeky young ass
who was trying to show off in regard to things of which he was totally
ignorant and of which, needless to say, they were ignorant too, for,
alas! the minute study of the Classics does not appear to necessitate a
general knowledge of literature. A scholar fully _en rapport_ with
Aristophanes or Juvenal and Martial may never have read Ben Jonson's
_Alchemist,_ or Beaumont and Fletcher's _Knight of the Burning
Pestle;_ or studied Charles Churchill, or Green on _The Spleen._
There was a mental attitude which the typical Don, full of the public-
school spirit and its dislikes, could never forgive. Except for the few
intimate friends who were devoted to me--Nettleship and Warren, T. H.
Green and, later, curiously enough, Mr. A. L. Smith, the present Master
of Balliol,--I was, I expect, universally regarded as the most
intolerable undergraduate they had ever beheld.
Jowett, the Master of Balliol, evidently felt the Stracheyphobia very
strongly, or perhaps I should say felt it his duty to express it very
strongly. He had not, I think, a great natural instinct in regard to the
characters of young men, but he was naturally anxious to improve those
with whom he came in contact. His method was to apply two or three fixed
rules. One of these was--and a good one in suitable cases--that if you
got hold of a boy who thought too much of himself, the best thing was to
stamp upon him upon every possible occasion, and so help him to reform
his ways. No doubt it saved a great deal of trouble to give this rule a
universal application, and it was often successful. Every now and then,
however, the generalisation failed.
Fortunately for me, I was not only of a contented nature, but so happy--
and also so happy-go-lucky--that I was not the very least worried by the
opinion of my educational superiors. I should have been genuinely
pleased to have pleased them, but as I had clearly failed in that, I did
not trouble about it further. I could always console myself with the
thought that schoolmasters and dons were notoriously narrow-minded
people, and that when one got out into the big world their opinions
would matter very little.
In a word, I accepted the situation with a cheerful and genuine
acquiescence. The Master did not like me, but then, why should he? I was
obviously not a model undergraduate. This acquiescence was soon
buttressed by a reasoned if somewhat unfair estimate of the Master's
character. I very soon began to hear plenty of Oxford gossip about him
and his failings--chief among them being his supposed favouritism. He
was very generally called a snob, which no doubt, in a superficial
sense, he was, and I soon got my nose well in the air in regard to his
worship of dukes and marquesses and even of the offscourings of Debrett
and his willingness to give special privileges to their errant progeny.
I had, however, to give the Master credit for the way in which he would
often shower his partial favours on some boy who had climbed the ladder
of learning and risen from a Board School to become a Scholar or
Exhibitioner of Balliol. My general feeling, however, was that of the
idealist who despises the schoolmaster or the scholar who becomes
worldly in his old age, and even goes so far as to follow the shameless
maxim, "_Dine with the Tories and vote with the Whigs._"
Of course I know now that Jowett's apparent worldliness and snobbishness
were calculated. He was very anxious to get good educative influences
exerted over the men who were to rule the country. This, translated into
action, meant getting the big men of the day, the _Optimates_ of
British politics and commerce, to send their sons to Balliol. He also,
no doubt, liked smart society for itself. Men of the world, especially
when they were politicians or persons of distinction, greatly interested
the translator of Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle. Though he was not
the kind of man to inflate himself with any idea that he was
"_Socrates redivivus_" I have no doubt that he found the worldlywise
malice of Lord Westbury as piquant as the Greek philosopher did the
talk of Alcibiades.
Young men, however, do not make excuses, and, as I have said, I was
inclined to be much scandalised, and to feel complacently self-righteous
over stories of the Master's "love of a lord"
The feeling which I engendered in the minds of the rest of the Balliol
Dons differed very little from that entertained by the Master. I can say
truthfully that I never received a word of encouragement, of kindly
direction, or of sympathy of any sort or kind from them in regard to my
work or anything else. The only exception was Mr. A. L. Smith. The
reason, I now feel sure, was that they believed that to take notice of
me would have only made me more uppish. I daresay they imagined I should
have been rude or surly, or have attempted to snub them. Still, the fact
is something of a record, and so worthy of note.
If I had been at a public school and had learned there to understand the
ways of teachers and masters, as the public-school boy learns to
understand them, as an old fox learns to understand the cry of the
hounds and of the huntsmen, I should have had no difficulty whatever in
getting on good terms with the College. As it was, I misunderstood them
quite as much as they misunderstood me. Each of us was unable to handle
the other. Yet I think, on a balance of accounts, I had a little more
excuse on my side than the Dons had. I was very young, very immature,
and without any knowledge or experience of institutional social life.
They, on the other hand, must have had previous knowledge of the
exceptional boy who had not been at a public school. Therefore they
should quite easily have been able to adjust their minds to my case.
They should not have allowed themselves to assume that the "uppishness"
was due to want of that humility which they rightly expected in their
pupils.
Curiously enough, my undergraduate contemporaries at Balliol were far
more successful in their efforts at understanding somebody who had not
been at a public school. They appeared to have no prejudices against the
homebred boy. I was never made in the least to feel that there was any
bar or barrier between me and my fellow-freshmen. As proof of this, I
may point to the fact that every one of my intimate friends at Balliol
were public-school boys. I have no doubt I was considered odd by most of
my contemporaries, but this oddness, and also my inability to play
football or cricket, never seemed to create, as far as I could see, any
prejudice. Indeed, I think that my friends were quite discerning enough
and quite free enough from convention to be amused and interested by a
companion who was not built up in accordance with the sealed pattern.
In spite of the Dons, about whom I troubled singularly little, in spite
of my being ploughed twice for Mods., sent down from my college, made to
become an unattached student, and only reinstated at Balliol after I had
got through Mods, and was guaranteed to be going to do well in the
History Schools, I can say with absolute truth that I was never anything
but supremely happy at Oxford--I might almost say deliriously happy.
I may interpolate here that when I went back to Balliol after my year as
an unattached student, the only thing that the Master said, on
readmitting me, was something of this kind: "The College is only taking
you back, Mr. Strachey, because your history tutor says that you are
likely to get a First." I was appropriately shocked at this, for I had
become well aware that Jowett was looked upon by a good many people in
the University as simply a hunter for Firsts, a Head who did not care
much what kind of people he had in his College, or how their minds were
developed in the highest sense, so long as they came out well in the
Schools List. He was alleged, that is, to take a tradesman's view of
learning. These kinds of gibe I naturally found soothing, for I was able
to imagine myself as a scholar, though not as a winner of a First.
Incidentally, also, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, I think I
was a little hurt by the Master's want of what I might call humanity, or
at any rate courtesy in his treatment of the shorn lamb of Moderations.
However, I have not the least doubt that he thought he was stimulating
me for my good. This, indeed, was his constant mood. I remember at
Collections his telling me that I should never do anything except,
possibly, be able to write light trifles for the magazines. On another
occasion he asked me what I was going to do in life. I told him that I
wanted to go to the Bar, which was then my intention. To this he replied
oracularly, "I should have thought you would have done better in
diplomacy."
That tickled me. It was clearly a back-hander over an ingenious attempt
which I had made a day or two before to prove how much better it would
be for me to get off three days before Collections and so obtain another
whole week in the bosom of my family at Cannes! No doubt Jowett's system
of controlling the recalcitrant portions of the College through sarcasm
was well meant and occasionally fairly successful. Taking it as a whole,
however, I felt then, as I feel now, that sarcasm is the one weapon
which it is never right or useful to use in the case of persons who are
in the dependent position when compared with the wielder of the
sarcastic rapier;--persons _in statu pupillari,_ persons much
younger than oneself, persons in one's employment, or, finally, members
of one's own family. Sarcasm should be reserved for one's equals, or,
still better, for one's superiors. The man who is treated with sarcasm,
if he cannot answer back either because it is true, or he is stupid, or
he is afraid to counter-attack a superior, is filled, and naturally
filled, with a sense of burning indignation. He feels he has had a cruel
wrong done to him and is in no mood to be converted to better courses.
That to which his mind reacts at once is some form of vengeance, some
way of getting even with his tormentor. The words that burn or rankle or
corrode are not the words to stimulate. No doubt Socrates said that he
was the gadfly of the State and stung that noble animal into action, but
what may be good for a sluggish old coach-horse is not necessarily good
for a thoroughbred colt with a thin skin.
To return to my general feeling about Oxford while I lived there.
Instinctively I seem to have realised what I came to see so clearly in
my post-Oxford days, that the great thing that one gets at a University
is what Bagehot called the "impact of young mind upon young mind."
Though there must be examinations and lectures, and discipline and hard
reading, nothing of all this matters a jot in comparison with the
association of youth with youth and the communion of quick and eager
spirits. I have lived my life with clever people, men and women who
thought themselves masters of dialectic, but I can say truthfully that I
have never heard such good talk as in my own rooms and in the rooms of
my contemporaries at Oxford. There, and there only, have I seen
practised what Dr. Johnson believed to be an essential to good talk, the
ability to stretch one's legs and have one's talk out. It may be
remembered that Dr. Johnson, in praising John Wesley as a talker, sadly
admitted that his great qualities in this respect were all marred
because Wesley was always in a hurry, always had some pressing business
in hand which cut him short when at his best.
The happy undergraduate never has to catch a train, never has an editor
or a printer waiting for him, never has an appointment which he cannot
cut, never, in effect, has money to make. He comes, indeed, nearer than
anybody else on earth to the Hellenic ideal of the good citizen, of the
free man in a free state. If he wants to talk all through the night with
his friends, he talks. The idea of his sparing himself in order that he
may be fresh next morning for Mr. Jones's lecture never enters his head
for a moment. Rightly; he considers that to talk at large with a couple
of friends is the most important thing in the world. In my day we would
talk about anything, from the Greek feeling about landscape to the
principles the Romans would have taken as the basis of actuarial tables,
if they had had them. We unsphered Plato, we speculated as to what
Euripides would have thought of Henry James, or whether Sophocles would
have enjoyed Miss---'s acting, and felt that it was of vital import to
decide these matters. But I must stop, for I see I am beginning to make
most dangerous admissions. If I go on, indeed, I am likely enough to
become as much disliked by the readers of the present day as I was by
the Oxford Dons of forty years ago.
I could fill this book with stories of my life at Oxford, of its
enchantment, of my friendships, of my walks and rides and of my
expeditions up the river; for, not being a professional athlete, I had
time to enjoy myself. It would be a delight also to recall my
associations, the first in my life, with young men who were writing
verses, like myself, such men as Beeching, Mackail, Spring Rice (our
Ambassador during the War, at Washington), Rennell Rodd, Nicolls, and a
dozen others. But space forbids. I can only quote Shenstone's delightful
verses on Oxford, in his _Ode to Memory_, verses which I have
quoted a hundred times:
And sketch with care the Muses' bow'r,
Where Isis rolls her silver tide,
Nor yet omit one reed or flow'r
That shines on Cherwell's verdant side,
If so thou may'st those hours prolong
When polish'd Lycon join'd my song.
The song it Vails not to recite--
But, sure, to soothe our youthful dreams,
Those banks and streams appear'd more bright
Than other banks, than other streams;
Or, by thy softening pencil shown,
Assume they beauties not their own?
And paint that sweetly vacant scene
When, all beneath the poplar bough,
My spirits light, my soul serene,
I breathed in verse one cordial vow
That nothing should my soul inspire
But friendship warm and love entire.
I do not mean to inflict upon my readers the tiresome record of my
failure to pass Moderations, or the description of how I did eventually
get through by a process which came very near to learning by heart
English translations of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, a portion of
Livy's History, and Horace's Epistles. To do so would be both long and
tedious. The circumstances have, however, a certain interest considered
from one point of view, and that is the use and misuse of the classics
for educational purposes.
CHAPTER XI
A CLASSICAL EDUCATION
Though I made such a hash of classical studies and was apparently so
impermeable to Latin and Greek literature, I am not one of those people
who are prepared to damn the Greek and Latin classics, either with faint
praise or with a strenuous invective. I am not prepared to say with
Cobden that a single copy of _The Times_ is worth the whole of
Thucydides, or to ask, as did the late Mr. Carnegie, what use Homer was
either in regard to wisdom or human progress. I believe that in all the
things of the soul and the mind the stimulus of the Greek spirit is of
the utmost value. The Romans, no doubt, excelled the Greeks on the
practical side of law--though not in the pure jurisprudential spirit.
Again, the Hebrews did incomparable service to mankind in their handling
of such vital matters as the family, the place of women and children in
the State, and the position of the slave. On the moral issues, in fact,
the Jewish prophet is far the safer teacher:
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of Civil Government
In their majestic, unaffected style
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a Nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins Kingdoms, and lays Cities flat.
In what concerns the intellectual rather than the moral side of life the
Greek is, of course, supreme. It is hardly too much to say that
intellectual progress has only pursued a steady and consistent course
when men's minds have been in touch with the Greek. The sense of beauty
in all the arts, intellectual and figurative, was the prerogative of the
Hellenic communities, or, rather, of Athens, for only in Athens was
perfection in the arts achieved. The Greek was the best, as he was the
first, director and teacher. It is true that the artists of Florence,
Umbria, Lombardy, and Venice equalled the Greeks in some of the arts and
excelled them absolutely in the new art of painting. In Greece,
painting, though it had a beauty of its own, was hardly more than
exquisitely-coloured sculpture in the lowest conceivable relief. In
painting the Italians were guided by a wholly different series of visual
conceptions. Their understanding and use of atmosphere and mass was
something of which the Greeks had formed no conception. Apart, however,
from painting, the Greeks were the first to light and feed the sacred
flame of Beauty.
There is a charming story of the way in which Renan emphasised this
fact. Some thirty-five years ago--I well remember the period--it was the
fashion, just as, in a sense, it is the fashion now, to say that the
Egyptians were the real masters of sculpture, wall-painting, and metal
work, that the Greeks learnt from them, and in the fine arts originated
nothing. At that time it happened that the Keeper of the Egyptian
antiquities at the Louvre was running this theory for all it was worth.
One day he showed Renan and a party of distinguished visitors a special
exhibition illustrating his contention. Notable examples of Egyptian art
were produced, as proving how perfectly and finally the Egyptians
treated the human figure in the round, in bas-relief, in the bronze
statue, in the wooden statue, and even in earthenware. And to all the
treasures displayed was added the chorus of the Professor: "_And so,
you see, the Greeks invented nothing._" Renan assented. "Nothing.
Nothing," he echoed, but added as an afterthought: "_Seulement le
Beau._"
I have sometimes thought that these words, "_Seulement le Beau_,"
might do as the commemorative epitaph of the Greek race. But of course
the Greek was a great deal more than the exponent of the beautiful. I
only tell this story to make it quite clear how deep is my reverence and
admiration for the Greeks, and how strongly I feel that their
philosophers and their poets are lively oracles from which the human
spirit may still draw perennial draughts of inspiration.
But if this is so, it will be asked, "How comes it that, with these
views, you proclaim yourself an opponent to compulsory Greek and
compulsory Latin in schools and universities?" My answer is, it is just
because I am such an intense believer in the quickening power of the
Greek mind and in the immense advantages secured by getting into touch
with the Greek spirit that I desire the abolition of compulsory Greek.
No civilised man should ever be out of touch with it at first hand. But
this means, translated into action, no compulsory Greek grammar, no
compulsory drudgery in acquiring the things which do not really belong
to the Greeks but to the vapid pedants of vanished ages. I passionately
desire that as many people as possible should enjoy Hellenic culture. I
want to clear away the smoky mist of grammatical ineptitude which keeps
men from the great books and great minds of antiquity and prevents the
soul of the Greek and the soul of the Englishman--natural allies, for
some strange reason--from flowing together.
It is appropriate that I should testify. Owing to having been forced to
try to learn the Greek Grammar instead of reading the books written by
the Greeks in a language which I could understand, I very nearly made an
intellectual shipwreck. Indeed, it was only by a series of lucky
accidents that I escaped complete ignorance of the Greek spirit, though
retaining a certain knowledge of the grammar.
It was only after I had miserably squirmed my way through Mods., as a
man may squirm through some hole in a prison wall, that I had the
slightest idea of what was meant by the Greek spirit.
I closed my grammar, with all the miserable and complicated stuff about
_tnpto_ and its aorists, the enclitic and the double-damned
Digamma, to open my Jowett's Plato, my Dakyns' Xenophon, and, later,
Gilbert Murray's Dramatists and Mackail's Anthology. It is true that in
the squirming process I have described I had to read a portion of the
_Anabasis_ and of the _Odyssey_ and _Memorabilia_, as well as
books of Caesar, Livy, Horace, and Virgil.
In the case of these books I acquired nothing but a distaste so deep
that it has only just worn off. Only after an interval of forty years
could I bear to read these kill-joys in translation. No doubt some of
the fault was mine. Possibly I was born with an inability to learn
languages. But if that is so it is a misfortune, not a crime for which
one should be put on the rack!
By the time I realised fully the glory of Greek letters, I was a very
busy man, and bitter indeed was the thought that the well-meaning
persons who maintain our university system had actually been keeping me
all those years from the divine wells of grace and beauty. But for them,
how many more years of enjoyment might I have drawn from the Socratic
_Dialogues_, from the _Apology_, and from the _Republic_! Think
of it! It was not till four years ago that I read Thucydides and had my
soul shaken by the supreme wickedness, the intellectual devilry of
the Melian controversy. How I thrilled at the awful picture of the supreme
tragedy at Syracuse! How I saw! How I perished with the Greek warriors
standing to arms on the shore, and watching in their swaying agony
the Athenian ships sink one by one, without being able to lift a hand,
or cast a long or short spear to help them! Yet the watchers knew that
the awful spectacle on which they gazed meant death, or a slavery worse
than death, for every one of them!
Almost worse to me than the denial of Plato, the dramatists Thucydides
and Homer, was the refusal to allow me to walk or hunt with Xenophon,
and to saunter through his kitchen or his grounds. And all because I
could not show the requisite grammatical ticket. Could anything be more
fascinating than the tale of Xenophon's prim yet most lovable young
wife, or the glorious picture of the boy and girl lovers with which
Xenophon closes his _Symposium_?
My sense of a deprivation unnecessary and yet deliberate was as great in
regard to Latin literature. It was only in 1919, owing to what I had
almost called a fortunate illness, that I took to reading Cicero's
Letters and came under an enchantment greater than that cast even by
Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, or Madame du Deffand.
For forty years I was kept in ignorance of a book which painted the
great world of Rome with a touch more intimate than even that of St.
Simon. Cicero in his Letters makes the most dramatic moment in Roman
history, the end of the Oligarchic Republic, live before one. Even
Macaulay's account of the Revolution of 1688 seems tame when called in
comparison.
I know that by the time some Greek or Latin scholar has got as far as
this he will ask with a smile,
Why is this self-dubbed ignoramus making all this pother about being
deprived of the classics? Surely he cannot have failed to realise that
it is impossible to understand and appreciate the classics properly
without having learnt Latin and Greek? But you cannot learn Latin and
Greek without learning the grammar. He not only on his own showing has
no grievance, but is giving support to those who desire that the
classics should remain the centrepiece of our educational system.
For all such objections I have one, and I think a final, argument. When
people ask me how I propose to enjoy Plato without knowing Greek, I ask
them to tell me, in return, how they manage to enjoy reading one of the
greatest poets in the world, Isaiah, without knowing Hebrew. How have
they found consolation in the Psalms; how have they absorbed the worldly
wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; how have they read the lyric
choruses of the Song of Solomon; how have they followed the majestic
drama of the Book of Job? _They read them in translations_. That is
the way in which they have filled their minds with the noble deeds and
thoughts of the Hebrew history and Hebrew literature. That is the
answer, the true answer, and the only answer.
A good, practical, commonsense proof of what I am saying is to be found
in the fact that the ordinary man and also the man of brains who has
gone through the good old fortifying classical curriculum, to quote
Matthew Arnold once more, and who _theoretically_ can read the
great Greek and Latin authors in their own languages, and without
translations, hardly reads them at all. Those who know that it is a
translation or nothing will be found to be far closer and more constant
readers of Plato and Thucydides. Certainly that is my case. To this day
I find myself reading the Greek and Latin authors in translation when
many of my friends, who took Honours Mods, and Honours Greats, would no
more think of opening books which they are supposed to have read than
they would attempt to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. The man with a
classical education will still worry himself over an accidental false
quantity or a wrongly-placed Greek accent, but it is extraordinary how
seldom, unless he is a schoolmaster, you hear of him enjoying the
classics or applying knowledge drawn from the classics to modern
literature or to modern politics.
A further proof of this view, which I admit sounds strange, may be
registered. The only man I have known who habitually read Greek in the
original was Lord Cromer, and he had not had a classical education. He
left a private day-school in London to go straight to Chatham, where he
was prepared for entry into the artillery. And at Chatham they did not
teach Greek. Therefore when, as a gunner subaltern, he went to the
Ionian Islands on the staff of Sir Henry Storks, he was without any
knowledge of Greek. He wanted, however, as he told me, to know modern
Greek, as the language of the islands. Also, like the natural Englishman
he was, to be able to talk with the Albanian hunters with whom he went
shooting in the hills of the mainland. But when he had mastered enough
modern Greek to read the newspaper and so forth, he began to wonder
whether he could not use his knowledge to find out what Homer was like.
He very soon found out that he could read him as one reads Chaucer. From
this point he went on till he made himself--I will not say a Greek
scholar, but something much better--a person able to read Greek and
enjoy it in the original. Throughout the period of my friendship with
him, which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, he was constantly
reading and translating from Greek authors and talking about them in an
intimate and stimulating way.
Once more, it is because I want people to study and to love classical
literature and to imbibe the Greek spirit that I desire that the
ordinary man should not be forced to grind away at Greek grammar when he
might be getting in touch with great minds and great books. I am not
blind, of course, to the gymnastic defence of the classics, though I do
not share it. All I say is, do not let us make a knowledge of the Greek
and Latin languages a _sine qua non_ in our educational system, on
the ground that such knowledge brings the ordinary man into touch with
the Greek spirit. It does nothing of the kind.
But though Greek and Latin literature had thus been temporarily closed
to me, I still, Heaven be praised, could enjoy the glories of my own
language. When I began to read for the History School, I not only felt
like a man who had recovered from a bad bout of influenza, but I began
to realise that academic study was not necessarily divorced from the
joys of literature, but that, instead, it might lead me to new and
delightful pastures. Even early Constitutional History, though
apparently so arid, opened to me an enchanting field of study. The study
of the Anglo-Saxon period brought special delights. It introduced me to
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and to Bede, both of them books which deserve
far greater fame than they have yet received. Again, I can quite
honestly say that the early part of Stubbs's Excerpts from the Laws,
Charters, and Chronicles proved to be for me almost as pleasant as a
volume of poetry. To my astonishment _Magna Charta_ and the
_Dialogus de Scaccario_ were thoroughly good reading. The answer to
"_Quod est murdrum_" was a thrilling revelation of what the Norman
Conquest was and was not. I understood; and what is more delightful than
that? There were even good courses, I found, in such apparently
univiting a feast as "The Constitutions of Clarendon." I shall not
easily forget my pleasure in discovering that the quotation "_Nollumus
leges Angliaemutari_" on which Noodle relied in his immortal oration,
is to be found in the record of the Barons' great "Palaver."
CHAPTER XII
AN OXFORD FRIENDSHIP
Though it is the rule of these memoirs not to deal at any length or
detail with living people, I feel I must make an exception in regard to
Sir Bernard Mallet, the first friend I made at Oxford, the closest
friend of my college days, and the dearest friend of my after-life. Of
course, even in his case I cannot say all that I should like to say, for
I don't want to expose myself to the gibe of the wit who, reading a
sympathetic notice of a living man, declared that he did not care for
funeral orations on the living! Another advocate of ascetic reticence in
similar circumstances is said to have remarked that it was hardly decent
to use such favourable expressions except in the case of a dead man!
But, though I am not going to expose myself to the accusation of
gushing, I cannot give a true picture of myself without dwelling upon
Mallet's influence upon me. My friendship with him was my first
experience of real friendship--the relation which it is in the power of
youth to establish and maintain, a relation akin to the tie of
brotherhood, and one which may have, and ought to have, in it an element
of devotion.
Friendship between two young men, keen on all things political,
intellectual, and literary, is rightly and necessarily founded upon
talk. My friend and I were eager to know not only about each other but
about everything else in the universe. Mallet's influence became at once
very great upon me at a point where I much needed it. He was deeply
interested, and very well-read for a boy of his age, in Political
Economy. His father, Sir Louis Mallet, was not only one of the most
famous and most enlightened of Civil Servants, but had made a scientific
study of the theory of economics. Besides that he had acted as Cobden's
official secretary when Cobden negotiated the Commercial Treaty with
France, and had become deeply attached to the great Free Trader and his
policy. From his father Mallet had learnt what was infinitely more
important than anything he could learn in textbooks. He had learnt to
look upon Political Economy not as something to be applied only to
trade, but something which concerned our morals, our politics, and even
our spiritual life. Though it, no doubt, involved Free Trade, what both
the Mallets pleaded for was "the policy of Free Exchange" a policy
entering and ruling every form of human activity, or, at any rate,
everything to which the quality of value inured, and so the quality of
exchangeability.
At the time when I went up to Balliol and sat down beside Mallet at the
Freshmen's table in the Hall, wild and eager, shy and forthcoming,
bursting with the desire to talk and to hear talk, and yet not exactly
knowing how to approach my fellow-novices, I was an ardent, if
theoretical, Republican and Socialist. I was, while only a schoolboy of
fourteen or fifteen, a passionate admirer of Arch, the man who formed
the first Agricultural Labourers' Union, and a regular reader of his
penny weekly organ. It was the first paper to which I became an annual
subscriber. Now, though I had noted some of the extravagances of the
extremists, I was on the edge of conversion to full-blown Socialism or
Communism. We did not much distinguish in those days between the two. I
was especially anxious, as every young man must be, to see if I could
not do something to help ameliorate the condition of working-men and to
find a policy which would secure a better distribution of wealth and of
the good things of the world.
Very soon, at once indeed, I confided my views to my new friend. Our
conversation is imprinted upon my mind. Though, of course, I did not
realise it at the time, it was destined to have a great effect upon my
life. I told Mallet that I was so haunted by the miseries of the poor
and the injustice of our social order that, however much I disliked it
for other reasons, and however great the dangers, I was growing more and
more into the belief that it would be my duty to espouse the cause of
Socialism; then, be it remembered, preached by Mr. Hyndman in full and
Mr. Henry George, the single-tax man, in an attenuated form. I was a
Free Trader, of course, but if, as a result of the Free Trade system,
the poor were getting poorer, and the rich richer, as, alas! it seemed,
I was prepared to fight to the death even against Free Trade.
On this Mallet, instead of growing zealously angry with my ignorant
enthusiasm, asked me very pertinently what right I had to suggest that
the principles of Political Economy and Free Trade had been tested and
had failed. He admitted that if to maintain them would prevent a better
distribution of wealth, they must be abolished forthwith. He went on to
agree also that if everything else had been exhausted, it would be right
to try Socialism, _provided one was not convinced that the remedy
would prove worse than the disease_. But he went on to explain to me,
what I had never realised before, that the enlightened economists took
no responsibility for the existing system. They held, instead, that the
present ills of the world came, not from obeying but from disobeying the
teachings of Political Economy. Everywhere Free Exchange was
interfered with and violated, on some pretext or another. Even in
England it would not be said that Free Exchange had been given a
complete trial. It was, he went on to show, because they believed that
the ills of human society could be cured, _and only cured_, by a
proper understanding and a proper observance of the laws of economics
that men like his father advocated Free Exchange so strongly and
opposed every attempt to disestablish it.
[Illustration: J. St. Loe Strachey as an Oxford Fresman Ætat. 18]
We want as much as any Socialist to get rid of poverty, misery and
destitution, and we believe we have got the true remedy, if only we were
allowed to apply it. There would be plenty of the good things of the
world for everybody, if we did not constantly interfere with production,
and if we did not destroy capital, which would otherwise be competing
for labour, not labour for it. By the madness of war and the preparation
for war, we lay low that which prevents unemployment. We are always
preventing instead of encouraging exchanges, the essential sources of
wealth. Yet we wonder that we remain poor.
But the policy of Free Exchange, he went on, must not be regarded merely
as a kind of alternative to Socialism. True believers in economics were
bound to point out that the nostrum of the Socialists, though intended
to do good, would do infinite harm if applied to the community. There
was a possibility of release from the prison-house and its tortures by
the way of Free Exchange, but none by the way of Socialism. That could
only deepen and increase the darkness and bring even greater miseries
upon mankind than those they endured at the present moment.
I listened greatly moved, and asked for more instruction. I soon
realised that economics were a very different thing to what I had
supposed. My father was a strong Free Trader and had talked to me on the
subject, but without any great enthusiasm. He was an idealist, and in
his youth had strong leanings, first to the Socialism of Owen, and then
to the Christian Socialism of Maurice, Kingsley, and their friends.
Though later he had dropped these views and had become a convinced
supporter of Cobden and Bright in the controversy over the Factory Acts
(and let me say that in this I still believe he was perfectly right), he
had taken the Shaftesbury rather than the Manchester view. Right or
wrong in principle, any proposal to protect women and children would
have been sure to secure his support. He would rather be wrong with
their advocates than right with a million of philosophers. Again, though
he liked Bright, I don't think he ever quite forgave him for talking
about the "residuum." My father had no sympathy with insult, even if it
was deserved. With him, to suffer was to be worthy of help and comfort,
and here, of course, he was right. Again, though he read his Mill, he
was not deeply interested. He understood and assented to the main
arguments, but he had never happened to get inspired by the idea that
the way to accomplish his essential desire to improve the lot of the
poor, and so to save society, was by discovering a true theory of
applying the principles of Free Exchange. As Sir Louis Mallet used to
say, a great deal of this misunderstanding came from the unfortunate
fact that we called our policy Free _Trade_, and so narrowed it and
made it appear sordid. If, like the French, we had called it Free
Exchange, we should have made it universal and so inspiring.
Mallet's words, then, came to me like a revelation. I saw at once, as I
have seen and felt ever since, that Political Economy, properly
understood and properly applied, is not a dreary science, but one of the
most fascinating and mentally stimulating of all forms of human
knowledge. Above all, it is the one which gives real hope for making a
better business of human life in the future than was ever known in the
past; far better than anything the Communist theorisers can offer. Let
their theories be examined, not with sentimental indulgence but in the
scientific spirit, and they fade away like the dreams they are.
My teacher was as keen as myself. But when two young minds are striking
on each other, the sparks fly. It was not long, then, before I believed
myself to have mastered the essential principles of Free Exchange--
principles simple in themselves, though not easy to state exactly. To
apply them in a lazy and sophistically-minded world is still more
difficult. Even business men and traders, who ought to know better,
ignore the science on which their livelihood is wholly founded.
Thus, with a halo of friendship and intellectual freedom round me, I
learned what Economics really meant, and what might be accomplished if
men could only understand the nature of Exchange, and apply their
knowledge to affairs.
When I see some public man floundering in the morasses of sophistry,
often a quagmire of his own creation, I say to myself, "There, but for
Bernard Mallet, goes John St. Loe Strachey." I should, indeed, be an
ingrate if I did not acknowledge my debt.
Here is Sir Bernard Mallet's account of me at Oxford in the year 1878.
SIR BERNARD MALLET'S MEMORANDUM
I can find no diaries--or any of the letters which I must have written
to my people about Oxford, so I must do what I can without their help. I
daresay they would not have been much use, as I never wrote good
letters, and my recollections of our first meeting are still pretty
fresh. It would be odd if they were not, for our Oxford alliance was far
the biggest and most important influence in my life there.
I think it must have been within two or three days of my arrival at
Balliol as freshman, in October, 1878, that I found myself sitting
beside you at dinner in Hall. No doubt we soon found out each other's
names. Yours at once fixed my attention because, as my father was then
Under Secretary of State for India and in intimate relations with your
two uncles, the great Indian statesmen, Sir John and General Richard
Strachey, it had long been familiar to me. This seemed to place us at
once, and give me a topic to begin on. Not that conversation was ever
lacking in your company! I remember to this hour the vivid, emphatic way
you talked, and your appearance then--your rather pale face and your
thin but strongly-built figure. I was at once greatly impressed, but I
am not sure that the first impression on a more or less conventional
public-schoolboy (such as I suppose I must have been) was altogether
favourable! Certainly I have always thought of you as a reason for
distrusting my first impression of a man! Luckily for me, however, we
continued to meet. You were so alive and unreserved that you very soon
posted me up in all the details of your life and family, and drew the
same confidences from me; and we soon found that we had so much in
common that in a very few days we fell into those specially intimate
relations which lasted through our Oxford days and long after. It is not
easy to analyse or account for the rapid growth of such a friendship,
but on my part, I think, it was the fact of your being so different from
others which at first slightly repelled, and then strangely attracted
me. To begin with, you had never been at school; you knew nothing of
Greek or Latin as languages, nor of cricket or football! But the want of
this routine education or discipline was no disadvantage to you (except
for certain serious misadventures in "Mods.!") because your personality
and strong intelligence enabled you to get far more out of exceptional
home surroundings than you could have got out of any school. You had
kept all your intellectual freshness and originality. In English
literature, from the Elizabethan downwards, you had read widely and
deeply, and your wonderful memory never failed you in quotation from the
poets. You ought really, with those tastes and that training, to have
become a poet yourself! and till politics and journalism drew you off I
often thought that pure literature would be your line. But your
political instincts were even then quite as strong; you came of a family
with political interests and traditions; and as a boy you had met a good
many Liberal statesmen--either at the house of Lady Waldegrave, your
mother's friend and country neighbour, or at Cannes, where your family
used to spend the winter. But your politics had rather a poetical tinge!
Shelley, Swinburne, Walt Whitman coloured your ideas--you were a
democrat and republican, with a great enthusiasm for the United States
and for the story of Abraham Lincoln. But you were never faddist or
doctrinaire, and your practical bent showed itself in the keen interest
you took in the noticing of political economy in which I used to dabble,
and which we used to discuss by the hour. You seemed, without having
studied text-books, to have an intuitive grasp of economic and fiscal
truths which astonished me and others much better qualified to judge
than I was. The real truth is that, though there were, no doubt, gaps in
your mental equipment which may have horrified the dons, you were miles
ahead of most of us in the width and variety of your interests, in your
gift of self-expression and, in a way, in knowledge of the world. Every
talk with you seemed to open up new vistas to me. I was perhaps more
receptive than the usual run of public-schoolboy, as I too had had
interests awakened by home surroundings and tradition. We both of us, in
fact, owed a very great deal to our respective fathers, and it was a
real pleasure and guide to me to be introduced later to your father and
home at Sutton Court--as I know it was to you to get to know and
appreciate my father.
But I must not wander from my subject, which is to try and give a
faithful account of how you struck me in those days. I have said nothing
yet of one of your characteristics which I think weighed with me, and
impressed me more than anything else, and that was the remarkable power
you had, and have always retained, of drawing out the best in others.
Intellectual power or force of character (or whatever you like to call
it) is so often self-centred as to lose half its value. With you,
however, it was different. You always appeared to be, and I think
genuinely were, quite as much interested in other people's ideas or
personalities as in your own--or even more interested. You listened to
them, you questioned, you put them on their mettle, you helped them out
by interpreting their crude or half-impressed thoughts, and all this
without a trace of flattery or patronage. By this, and by your generous
over-appreciation of them, you inspired your friends with greater
confidence in themselves than they would otherwise have had. In your
company they were, or felt themselves, really better men. To one of my
disposition, at all events, this was a source of extraordinary
encouragement and help. I felt it from the first, and I cannot omit
mentioning it in my attempt to describe what you were like when we met
at Oxford. I am afraid it is a poor attempt, and wanting in details
which contemporary records, if they had existed, could alone have
supplied. But I hope you may find something in it which will suit your
purpose. I don't think, after all, you have changed as much as most
people in the forty-odd years I have known you!
CHAPTER XIII
OXFORD MEMORIES (_Concluded_)
Even at the risk of making my autobiography open to accusation that it
is a kind of Strachey Anthology, I should be giving a false impression
of myself and my life at Oxford if I did not say something about my
poetical life at the University, for there, as in my childhood and my
boyhood, poetry played a great part. I did not leave the Muses till I
left their bower on the Isis. Every mood of my Oxford life was reflected
in my verse. I can only record a very few of those reflections, and
here, again, must look forward to some day making a collection of my
poems and letting them tell their own tale--an interesting incursion, I
venture to say, for those who are interested in the evolution of English
verse from 1870 to 1890.
The first thing to be recorded in this epitome of my _biographica
poetica_ is my intense delight at finding in Oxford people of my own
age who cared for poetry as I did, and the same kind of poetry. It is
true that most of my friends with a poetic bent wore their rue with a
difference, but that did not matter. Though they practised a different
rite, they were all sworn to the great mystery of the Muses. Men like
Beeching, Mackail, Nichols, Warren, and also Willie Arnold, who, though
not an undergraduate, very soon became one of my close friends, never
failed, and this is the test, to be delighted in any new discovery in
verse with which I was for the moment intoxicating myself.
I was always irregular in my tastes. If I liked a piece of verse, I
liked it with passion and praised it inordinately; again I was apt to be
as absolute in my dislike. I was a kind of poaching gipsy of literature.
I had not only a willingness to eat any wild thing from a hedgehog to a
beechnut or a wild raspberry, but also an uncanny power of finding out
literary game, raising it, and trapping it, not by the stately methods
of the scholar but by some irrational and violent intuition. Instead of
reading slowly, patiently, and laboriously, as no doubt I ought to have
read, _i.e._, as my tutors would have liked me to read, I used to
dive headlong into some poet, old or young. Even if I could only "get at
him" for an odd half-hour, I could bring back with me something worth
keeping, something which would sing in my head and be forced into the
ears of my friends for many days, and sometimes many weeks.
This habit of what one might call random and sudden quotation was
amusingly hit off by a friend of mine, Fry, son of the late Lord Justice
Sir Edward Fry. In a neat little verse after the manner of Beeching's
and Mackail's celebrated verses on the Balliol Dons--verse modelled, it
may be noted, on the pageant of Kings and Queens in Swinburne's _Poems
and Ballads_, Fry thus delineated me:
I am Strachey, never bored
By Webster, Massinger or Ford;
There is no line of any poet
Which can be quoted, but I know it.
In the first couplet I have to own a true bill. Even if my friends were
bored, though I was not, which I now feel must have often been the case,
they certainly never showed it. I seemed to be given a kind of privilege
or license to quote as much as ever I liked.
I expect, however, that the Dons were not quite as easy-going. If I
quoted something that seemed to me apposite at the end of a lecture, or
when I was seeing my tutor over an essay, I noticed with an innocent
wonderment that they were apt to appear shocked. Probably I made them
feel nervous. Either they had not heard the lines before, and,
therefore, very likely thought that I was trying to get a score off them
by inventing some tag of rhymes which I could afterwards say they took
for genuine, or, on the other hand, if they did know the lines, I made
some blunder in quoting them which painfully added to a conviction
already formed that I was a wild, inconsequent, and shallow-minded boy
whose only idea was to "show off" and strut about in borrowed plumes.
After all, even if that was a mistaken diagnosis it was not an unnatural
one.
I was an unsettling and unclassifiable influence in a place that liked
orderly classification. The Dons, I make no doubt, felt about me as did
Lance about his dog. He who undertakes to be an undergraduate should be
an undergraduate in all things, and not a kind of imitation Bohemian
verse-writer, bawling his creaking couplets through the College Hall.
They knew the type of scholar who could write good Greek verse, and even
English verse. They also knew, and in a way respected, the athlete, the
hunting man, or "the magnificent man" who kept two hunters and a private
servant, and spent at the rate of a couple of thousands a year. But here
was a creature who did not fit into any of these categories, and who was
painfully irregular without being vicious or extravagant, or drunken, or
abnormally rowdy. I was, in fact, a mental worry. I could not be fitted
neatly into Oxford life.
I have mentioned Fry's rhyme about me. I must also mention Beeching's
verse, or at any rate the first couplet--the rest, though friendly
enough, was not worthy of the opening:
Spoken jest of Strachey, shall it
Fail to raise a smile in Mallet?
I was, of course, pleased to be thus associated with my friend, though
honesty compels me to say that I laughed quite as much, or even more, at
Mallet's jests than he did at mine. Still for the rhyme's sake (I have
always sympathised with the rhymer's difficulties), it was necessary to
put the joke on the other leg.
At Balliol in the late 'seventies' and early 'eighties' we were a nest
of singing-birds. I well remember the present Sir Rennell Rodd coming
into my rooms when I was a freshman and asking me whether I would
contribute to a little collection of poems which he and a group of his
friends were bringing out, the group, by the way, including the present
Lord Curzon. I shyly assented; but there was a difficulty. They wanted
something short and lyrical, and most of my verses were either too long,
or else, I thought, too immature to be published. In the end, Rodd
carried off with him the following lyric--a work in regard to which I
felt no pride of parentage either then or now, and only quote because it
was made the occasion for a very neat parody by Mackail. Here is the
poem:
My lute
Lies mute,
My lyre is all unstrung,
And the music it once flung
Dies away.
In the day
I have no power to sing,
Nor doth the night-time bring
Any song.
All is wrong,
Now my lady hath no care
For my heart and for my prayer.
The parody was quite delightful, and I can well remember the intense joy
with which I heard of it and my surprise that the author thought it
necessary to apologise for it. He apparently thought I might be hurt. It
ran something like this:
My scout
Is out.
My scout is never in.
I am growing very thin,
And pale--
etc., etc.
Our verse efforts, though not very good in themselves, had a good
result.
A rival clique of poets, led by Mackail and Beeching, put forward a
little pamphlet of their own, full of what was really exquisite verse of
the Burne-Jones, Morris, Swinburne type. In the following term, however,
the two poetic schools amalgamated under a common editorship, adopting
the name of _Waifs and Strays_ as their title. To almost every
issue of the _Waifs and Strays_ I contributed, though I think my
Editors sometimes were rather horrified at my sending in so much blank
verse, and blank verse of what the Elizabethans called a "licentious"
type, that is, not governed by strict rules.
Besides this, my poems were apt to be too long. I had a friendly
conflict over them with Beeching. It showed, however, the open-
mindedness of the Morrisean editors that my poetry, though so entirely
different to their own, was not only accepted but that they showed great
sympathy with my experiments in unrhymed measures.
Oxford memories are among the pleasantest things in the world; they are
the last chapter, or last chapter but one, in the book of youth. But I
must soon roll up the enchanted manuscript, come to sterner things, and
leave many serene hours unnumbered. Especially do I regret to pass over
the long days spent on the river in a four, with a cox and a good
luncheon and tea hamper in the stern, and a sixth man in the bows.
Those, indeed, were sweet hours and the fleetest of time. Mallet, I, and
Warren were usually the nucleus of the party. To ourselves we added
another three. Among these was sometimes Grant Duff, sometimes Horatio
Brown, who, though he had left Oxford at that period, was often "up for
a month or two"; sometimes, too, Portsmouth Fry, and one or other of
Mallet's Clifton College friends. Again, sometimes Mallet's brother
Stephen, or my brother Henry, joined the pursuit of the golden fleece.
I was always for pushing on in order to experience something or discover
something. As Pepys used to say, "I was with child to see something
new." Once, by incredible exertion, I managed to get my boatload as far
up the river as Lechlade. The place, I need hardly say, was chosen by me
not for geographical reasons or because of the painted glass, but solely
and simply because of Shelley's poem. I longed to go to the actual
source of the river, to Thames-head itself, but in this I never
succeeded. Mallet was always for milder measures, and for enjoying the
delights of the infant Thames at Bablock Hythe, or some place of equal
charm and less exertion. Like the poet in Thomson, as I frequently
reminded him, he
Would oft suspend the dashing oar
To bid his gentle spirit rest.
He would demand, or take, an "easy" on the slightest pretext. A water-
lily, the dimness of his eyeglass, the drooping of the sunlight in the
West, the problem of whether some dingy little bird was a kingfisher or
a crested wagtail, demanded consultation and a pause in our toil.
Occasional rests, he proved, were a wise, nay, necessary precaution with
a heavy old tub manned by indifferent oarsmen. I, on the other hand,
would have violently explored the Thames in a man-o'-war's barge if I
could have done it no other way.
We talk of the charm of the open road, but what is it to the charm of
the open river, especially when the stream gets narrow? There, if
anywhere, reigns the Genius of the Unexpected. You push your boat round
some acute angle of water, with willows and tall rushes obscuring your
course, and then suddenly shoot out into the open, with a view, perhaps,
of an old church or manor-house, or of stately fields and trees--things
which a boy feels may be the prelude to the romance of his life. So
strong with me, indeed, was this feeling that fate was waiting round the
corner, not to stick a knife into me, but perhaps to crown me, that when
I wrote my unfinished novel, I began with a boatload of undergraduates
shooting out of the Thames up a tunnel of green boughs made by a
canalised brook, into a little lake in front of an exquisite grey
Elizabethan house. There the heroine and an aged parent or guardian were
surprised taking tea upon a bank studded with primroses and violets. How
an aged parent or guardian consented to have tea out-of-doors in violet-
time was not explained! But if I do not take care I shall go the way of
those orators who take up the whole of their speeches in explaining that
they have not time to say anything. Therefore, farewell to the glories
and delights of the Thames.
Whether, in point of fact, I was a bad son of Oxford, or she a
disdainful, indifferent, or careless mother, I neither know nor desire
to know. It is enough for me, as I have said already, that I loved her
young and love her now, love her for her faults as much as for her
virtues, but love her most of all for her beauty and her quietness, and
for the golden stream of youth which runs a glittering torrent through
her stately streets and hallowed gardens, her walks between the waters,
and her woodlands. The punctual tide of young hearts ebbs and flows as
of yore in a thousand college rooms--true cells of happiness. It informs
and inspires every inch of Oxford. It murmurs in her libraries and in
her galleries and halls. The pictures of the men of the past--often
England's truest knights of the eternal spirit--look gravely from their
deep-set frames.
But what is the use of a biography if it is general and not particular?
I may too often yield, like most people, to the temptations of a vague
rhetoric, but not here. Every loving thought of Oxford has for me
stamped upon it a specific and an originating example. When I think of
the faces looking down on me from the walls, and of how ardently I used
to wish that I might call my academic grandsires "my home and feast to
share," I picture myself back in Oxford, listening to a lecture in the
Hall of University. I see above me and above the wainscot Romney's (or
is it Gainsborough's?) picture of "the generous, the ingenuous, the
high-souled William Wyndham." I recall the delight with which I thought
of that fascinating and impulsive creature. He had sat where I was
sitting, and had dreamed like me in that very Hall the dreams of youth.
I keep in mind yet another specific example of how I linked myself to
the past. I remember, when dining in Christ Church Hall with a friend,
that I had the good luck to find myself opposite Lawrence's picture of
Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, the young diplomatist. He is dressed, if
I remember rightly, in a green velvet coat of exquisite tint and
texture. I daresay if by chance a reader looks up the two pictures he
will find that under the spell of memory they have assumed beauties not
their own. But what does that matter? They were to me, at twenty, an
inspiration. They are still, at sixty, a dream of delight.
Yet, intense as was my joy, when I return to Oxford and see my son
sharing the old pleasures, though with a difference, I can honestly say,
"_Non equidem invideo miror magis_"--"I do not envy, but am the
more amazed." I hope, nay, am sure that my son can retort with sincerity
from this shepherd's dialogue turned upside down, "_O fortunate senex;
ergo tua rura manebunt_"--"Oh, happy old man; therefore your little
fields and little woodlands at Newlands shall still flourish and
abound."
As my father taught me by his example long ago, I can be supremely happy
in my remembrances, and yet even happier at my own end of the continuum.
One has a right to be Hibernian in an Einstein world. After all, have I
not a right to be? I, who have always been an explorer at heart, am
getting near the greatest exploration of all. There are only two or
three more bends of the stream, and I shall shoot out into that lake or
new reach, whichever it may be. I may have a pleasant thrill of dread of
what is there, but not of fear. The tremendous nature of that
magnificent unknown may send a shiver through my limbs, but it is
stimulating, not paralysing.
Therefore, though I enjoy the past in retrospect, I open my arms with a
lover's joy to the future that is rushing to meet me. The man who cannot
enjoy that which is in front of him has never really enjoyed the past.
He is so much engaged in whimpering over what he has lost, that he
misses the glory of what is to come. Heaven be praised that sons have
morning when fathers have night, and may the fountain of perpetual youth
always send its best, its clearest, its most musical rivulets through
the High, the Broad, and the Corn.
But, though my memories of Oxford are so vivid and so happy, they are
also, as must in the end be all things human, enwoven with tears. It was
there that my eldest son died. I cannot do more than record the bare
fact. Yet I cannot write of Oxford as if he had never been. The shadow
that falls across my page could not be gainsaid.
CHAPTER XIV
PRESS WORK IN LONDON
Before I come to the period when I became, not only Editor, but
Proprietor, of _The Spectator_, I must give an account of some of
my experiences with other newspapers. My first newspaper article
appeared in _The Daily News_. It gave an account of the bonfires
lighted on the hill-tops round Cortina, in the Tyrol, at which place we
spent the summer of 1880, on the birthday of the Austrian Emperor. I was
an undergraduate at the time and was much delighted to find myself
described as "a correspondent" of _The Daily News_. I expect I owed
the acceptance of my descriptive article to the first sentence, which
began, "While the Austrian Kaiser is keeping his birthday with the
waters of the Ischl in his kitchens, we at Cortina, etc., etc." The
paper, however, for which I wrote chiefly during the time I was at
Oxford and in my first year after leaving Balliol was _The Saturday
Review_. The _Saturday_ in those days was famous for its "middles,"
and I was very proud to be able to get articles of this kind
accepted. I also wrote for _The Academy_ and for _The Pall
Mall_, which at that time was being edited by Lord Morley. I remember
that when going with a letter of introduction to him, he asked me
whether I had had any former experience of journalism. I told him that I
was writing "middles" for the _Saturday_. His reply was characteristic.
"Ah! When I was a young man I wrote miles of 'middles' for them"--
stretching out his hands to show the unending chain. Some of my
work also appeared in _The Academy_, then a paper manfully
struggling to represent the higher side of English literature. One
article I recall was a review of a reprint of the poems of Gay--a poet
who has come back into public notice owing to the delightful art of Mr.
Lovat Fraser, combined with the talent of the ladies and gentlemen who
so admirably represent Macheath and his minions male and female. On
looking at the article the other day, I was glad to see that I drew
attention to Gay's peculiar handling of the couplet and also to his
delight in every kind of old song and ballad. I quoted in this respect,
however, not from "The Beggar's Opera" but from the song as sung by
Silenus in Gay's Eclogues. One of these songs I have always longed to
hear or to read, owing to the fascination of its title--"The grass now
grows where Troy town stood."
After I went to _The Spectator_ the newspaper world widened in my
view. I left off writing for the _Saturday_ and the _Pall Mall_
and the _Academy_. Instead, and after I married, I took a
regular post as leader-writer on the staff of the _Standard_. I
also wrote a weekly leader for the _Observer_ for the best part of
a year. Of the _Observer_ I have only one thing to note, and that
is a saying of the Editor, Mr. Dicey, brother to my old friend,
Professor Dicey--a man for whom I have great veneration, though my lips
are happily closed in regard to him by the fact that he still lives. At
our first interview Mr. Dicey told me that in writing for the
_Observer_ I must remember that I was not writing for a weekly
paper, like the _Spectator_, but for a daily paper which, however,
only happened to come out on one day in the week. That, I always
thought, was a very illuminating and instructive remark, and it is one
which should be observed, in my opinion, by all writers in Sunday
papers. At present Sunday papers are in danger of becoming merely weekly
magazines. What the world wants, or, at any rate, what a great many
people want, is a daily paper to read on Sundays, not a miscellany,
however good. But perhaps Mr. Dicey and I were old-fashioned. Anyway,
there was a sort of easygoing, old-fashioned, early-Victorian air about
the _Observer_ Office of those days which was very pleasant. Nobody
appeared to be in a hurry, and one was given almost complete freedom as
to the way in which to treat one's subject. I was also a contributor to
the _Manchester Guardian_. For that distinguished paper I wrote
Notes for their London Letter and also a number of short reviews.
I should add that from that time till I became Editor and Proprietor of
the _Spectator_ I wrote a weekly article for _The Economist_--
a piece of work in which I delighted, for the Editor, Mr. Johnstone, was
not only a great editor, but a very satisfactory one from the
contributor's point of view. He told you exactly what he wanted written
about, and then left you to your own devices. As it happened, I
generally was in entire agreement with his policy, but if I had not
been, it would not have mattered, because he made it so very clear to
one, as an editor should, that one was expressing not one's own views,
but the views of the _Economist_. Whether they were in fact right
or wrong, they certainly deserved full consideration. Therefore, full
exposition could never be regarded as taking the wrong side.
Though _The Economist_ was less strongly Unionist than I was, I
cannot recall any occasion on which my leaders were altered by the
Editor. I can only recall, indeed, one comment made by Mr. Johnstone in
the course of some nine years. It was one that at the time very greatly
interested and amused me. It happened that Mr. Johnstone, though so
great a journalist and so sound a politician, was not a man who had paid
any attention to literature. Possibly, indeed, he did not consider that
it deserved it. When, however, the complete works of Walter Bagehot, for
many years Editor of _The Economist_, were published, Mr. Johnstone
asked me to review them for the paper. Needless to say I was delighted.
How could a young man in the 'nineties, full of interest in the
Constitution, in Economics, and in _belles-lettres_, have felt
otherwise than enthusiastic about Bagehot?
It was, therefore, with no small zest that I undertook an appreciation
of Bagehot in his own paper. I was always an immense admirer of
Bagehot's power of dealing with literary problems, and still more of
that perfection of style for which, by the way, he never received full
credit. I sought to say something which would make people "sit up and
take notice" in regard to his place in literature on this special point.
Accordingly, in praising his style, I said that it was worthy to be
compared with that of Stevenson, who at the time was held to be our
greatest master of words. Mr. Johnstone, with, as I fully admitted, a
quite unnecessary urbanity of manner, apologised to me for having
altered the article. He had, he explained, left out the passage about
Stevenson. But mark the reason! It was not because he thought the praise
exaggerated, but because he thought, and thought also that Mr. Bagehot's
family might think, that one was not properly appreciative of Bagehot's
work if one compared it to that of Stevenson! I have always been a lover
of the irony of accident in every form; but here was something which was
almost too bewilderingly poignant. I had thought, as I wrote, that
people might think I was going a good deal too far in my praise of
Bagehot, but lo and behold! my purple patch was "turned down," not
because of this but because it was held to be too laudatory of
Stevenson, and not laudatory enough of my hero!
I was, nevertheless, quite right. Bagehot's style was inimitable, and I
think if I were writing now, and with a better perspective, I should
have said not less but a good deal more in its praise. The humorous
passages in "The English Constitution" are in their way perfect, and,
what is more, they are really original. They owe nothing to any previous
humorist. They stand somewhere between the heartiness of Sydney Smith
and the dainty fastidiousness of Matthew Arnold, and yet imitate
neither. They have a quality, indeed, which is entirely their own and is
entirely delightful. One of the things which is so charming about them
is that they are authoritative without being cocksure. What could be
more admirable than the passage which points out that Southey, "who
lived almost entirely with domestic women, actually died in the belief
that he was a poet"? The pathos of the situation, and the Olympian
stroke delivered in such a word as "domestic" cannot but fill any
artisan of words with admiration. The essay, "Shakespeare and the Plain
Man," is full of such delights.
If I am told that I digress too much and that I seem to forget that I am
writing my autobiography and not an estimate of Walter Bagehot, I shall
not yield to the criticism. There is method in my madness. No, I am
prepared to contend, and to contend with my last drop of ink, that I am
justified in what I have done. If this book is worth anything, it is the
history of a mind, and Bagehot had a very great effect upon my mind,
largely through his skill in the art of presentation. Therefore it
cannot be out of place to say something about Bagehot's style. In truth,
instead of my being unduly discursive I have not really said as much as
I ought to have said on the subject.
I was also for rather more than a year a leader-writer on the
_Standard_--my only experience of true daily journalism. Of this
work I can only say that I enjoyed it very much while I was in direct
contact with Mr. Mudford, one of the greatest of English publicists, and
the man who made the _Standard_ what it was from 1874 till about
1894, one of the most important papers in the country. In those days the
_Standard_ though strongly conservative, was in no sense a
capitalist organ, nor in the bad sense a mere party organ. While it
supported the fixed institutions of the country, the Church, the Crown,
the House of Lords, and the City, it, at the same time, did it with
reason and moderation. In fact, though it was called a Tory paper, and
rejoiced in the name, it would have been called "left-centre" in any
other country. It was, it need not be said, strongly Unionist. I,
therefore, had no difficulty whatever in writing for it.
Oddly enough, it was said, and I think with truth, that Mr. Gladstone
always read the leaders in the _Standard_ and that it was his
favourite paper. He had, no doubt, a strong vein of Conservatism in his
nature. Though he thought it his duty to be a Liberal, when he gave
himself a holiday, so to speak, from party feelings, what he reverted to
was almost exactly the _Standard_ attitude towards the great
institutions I have just named. A propos of this I cannot resist a most
illuminating story of Mr. Gladstone, which I once heard told by Mr.
George Wyndham, the Irish Secretary. Mr. Wyndham commanded the Cheshire
yeomanry, after Mr. Gladstone had gone into retirement, and had his
regiment under canvas for training at the Park at Hawarden. Being an old
House of Commons friend, he went several times to dine. On one of these
occasions he was alone with Mr. Gladstone after dinner. While sipping
his port, the great man unbosomed himself on the political situation of
the future in language which, as Mr. Wyndham pointed out, approximated
to that of an old country squire--language which seemed astonishing from
the mouth of one who had only a few months before been the leader of the
Liberal and Radical Party.
Mr. Gladstone began with a panegyric of the English squires and
landlords, and then went on to say that he feared that in the coming
time the country-gentlemen of England who had done so much for her would
have a hard and difficult time. "But," he went on, "I pray Heaven, Mr.
Wyndham, that they will meet these trials and difficulties with a firm
and courageous spirit. They must not weakly yield the position to which
they have attained and which they deserve." I can remember no more of
Mr. Gladstone's speech, but it was all to the effect that the country-
gentleman must stand up against the rising tide of democracy. No wonder,
then, that Mr. Gladstone liked the _Standard_, even though it very
often attacked him in the strongest language.
Another person said to be a regular reader of the _Standard_, and I
should add rightly said to be, was Queen Victoria. The Queen, as Lord
Salisbury said at the time of her death, understood the English people
exactly, and especially the English middle-class. Therefore she would
have been wise to have read the _Standard_ as the representative
and interpreter of that class even if she had not liked the paper on its
merits. As a matter of fact, however, its note happened to be pitched
exactly to suit her. Her admiration was not politic, but personal.
Here I may note an interesting example of how little the person who has
had no first-hand experience of journalism understands the journalist's
trade and how often he or she is amazed at what I may call our simple
secrets. It happened that while I was writing leaders for the
_Standard_, which was twice a week, _i.e._, on Wednesday nights
and on Sunday nights, the news came in of the death of Lady Ely,
a lifelong personal friend of the Queen. Lady Ely had been with her
almost from girlhood and held up to the last, if not actually a Court
appointment, a position which brought her into constant personal contact
with the Queen. She was, in fact, the last of the Queen's women
contemporaries who were also close friends. This fact was common
knowledge, and Mr. Mudford in one of his notes, which were written in a
calligraphy the badness of which it is almost impossible to describe
without the aid of a lithographic print, wrote to me shortly, telling me
of the death and asking me to write that night a leader on Lady Ely. He
pointed out how great the loss was to the Queen, and how much,
therefore, she must stand in the need of sympathy. I don't suppose I had
ever heard of Lady Ely before, for ever since I came to London she was
living in retirement, and was not only not written about in the press,
but was very little talked about in general society. Further, I had only
the ordinary knowledge about the Queen, at that time much scantier than
it is now. It might be supposed that with this amount of ignorance it
would have been impossible to write a column and a half on the death of
an old lady who may be said to have had no public life at all, and whose
private life, even if it had been known, would have been either too
trivial or too intimate to be written about in a newspaper.
All the same, the task was not one which any journalist worth his salt,
that is, any journalist with imagination, would find difficult to
accomplish. What I did, and all it was necessary to do, was to envisage
a great lady devoted to the Queen from the time the Queen was married,
and also receiving in exchange the Queen's devotion to her. These two
women, now grown old, one in the service of her country and the other in
the service of her friend, had gradually seen, not only their nearest
and dearest drop away, but almost the whole of their own generation.
Thus they stood very much alone in the world. Sovereigns by their nature
are always lonely, and this loneliness was intensified in the case of
the Queen by the premature death of Prince Albert and by that inability
of sovereigns to make intimate friends, owing, not only to the seclusion
which life in a palace entails, but to the busy-ness of their lives.
This being so, the breaking by death of a friendship formed when life
was easier to Queen Victoria than it was after the death of the Prince
Consort was an irreparable loss. In a very special degree the Queen
needed sympathy of all who had minds to think or hearts to feel.
Such considerations were as easy to put on paper as they were true. To
draw a picture of the unknown Lady Ely seems more difficult, but, after
all, one felt sure that to have remained the intimate and trusted friend
of the Queen she must have had great qualities, for the Queen did not
give her confidence lightly. The separation of the two friends and the
intensification of the Queen's loneliness was therefore bound to touch
the heart of anyone who heard "the Virgilian cry" and felt "the sense of
tears in mortal things."
I am not ashamed to say that though by nature little disposed towards
the attitude of the courtier, I wrote my modest tribute of regret _ex
animo_. I was not only not writing a conventional article of
condolence, not even writing dramatically, but sincerely. When, however,
the leader was finished, I, of course, thought very little more of the
matter, but passed on to consider, after the way of my profession,
subjects so vital or so trivial as the best means of supporting Mr.
Balfour in his law-and-order campaign in Ireland, maintaining the cause
of Free Trade (the Standard was always a Free Trade paper), or
discussing such topics as "Penny Fares in Omnibuses," or "The
Preservation of the Ancient Monuments of London," or "Should Cats be
Taxed?" It was therefore with some astonishment that I received a
message from Mr. Mudford saying that the Queen had sent one of her
Private Secretaries to enquire on behalf of Her Majesty the name of the
writer of the article on Lady Ely. The Queen, said her Envoy, had been
very touched and struck by the article and felt sure that it must have
been written by someone who knew Lady Ely. It exactly represented her
life and character, and her special devotion to the Queen. The Queen
also appeared much struck by the representation of her own feeling
towards her friend.
Mr. Mudford, of course, gave my name. I have often thought with some
curiosity that the Queen must have been rather bewildered to find the
complete remoteness of the writer from her friend and herself. The Queen
had a very limited literary sense and, we may be sure, failed altogether
to realise how the nerves and sinews work in that strange creature the
journalist. She can hardly have been otherwise than disappointed in
finding that it was not some old friend of her own, or some friend of
her friend, but a person of whom she knew nothing--and with a name which
must have left her quite cold, even though with her knowledge of India
and her own family that name was not actually unfamiliar. My uncle, Sir
John Strachey, after the murder of Lord Mayo, was for six or seven
months Viceroy of India, pending the appointment of a successor. She
also, no doubt, had known the name of another Indian uncle, Sir Richard
Strachey.
But though Mr. Mudford was very sympathetic to the new journalist on his
staff, the arrangement did not last long. After I had been there about
six months, Mr. Mudford went into greater retirement than even before,
and practically left the whole conduct of the paper to his subordinate,
Mr. Byron Curtis, a journalist whom I can best describe by saying that
he was of the kind delineated by Thackeray. Though we had no open
quarrel I found it difficult to work with Mr. Curtis, and he, on the
other hand, was by no means satisfied with my work. He used to say to
me, "Please do remember, Mr. Strachey, that we don't want academic stuff
such as you put into the _Spectator_ and as they appear to like.
What we want is a nice flow of English." "A nice flow of English" with
Mr. Curtis meant what I may call the barrel-organ type of leader--
something that flowed like water from a smooth-running pump. This I
admit I could never manage to produce. Mr. Curtis's standard of style
was solely governed by the question of the repetition of the same word.
It was an unforgivable sin to repeat a substantive, adjective, or verb
without an intervening space of at least four inches. This, of course,
leads to that particular form of "journalese" in which a cricket-ball
becomes a "leathern missile" and so forth. Apropos of this I remember a
good Fleet Street story. An Editor, enraged with a contributor, tore up
an article on grouse, with the exclamation, "Look here! You have
actually used the word 'grouse' twenty times in your first paragraph!
Why cannot you call them something else?" "But," said the contributor,
"what else can I call them? They are grouse, and that is the only name
they have got. What would you want me to say?" "Oh! hang it all! Don't
make excuses. Why, can't you call them 'the feathered denizens of the
moor'?"
In any case, Mr. Curtis and I found it impossible to work together. The
process of separation was speeded up by the fact that I did not find
night-work suit me. All the same, I very much liked going down to the
policeman on night-duty. What was trying was to be up all night for two
nights in the week, and to lead a normal life during the other five.
That tended to throw one's working days quite out of gear. To adopt two
ways of life was a failure. All the same, I am always glad when I pass
down Fleet Street to be able to say to myself, "I too once lived in
Arcadia," and knew the pleasant side of the life. There was something
peculiarly delightful, when one's leader was finished, in lighting a
pipe or a cigar and stretching out one's legs and feeling really at
leisure. There is only real leisure in the middle of the night, that is
between one and five. There are no appointments, no meals, no duties, no
plans, no dependence on other people's arrangements. One is as free in
one's complete isolation as a Trappist monk. If one sees a friend in
Fleet Street or Shoe Lane at three, he will be as free as you.
Such a friend was Mr. Joseph Fisher, then the understudy of Mr. Byron
Curtis. Mr. Fisher, who is an Ulster-man, later became the Editor of
_The Northern Whig_, and I am happy to say is still alive. He has
done excellent work in defending the interests of the Loyalists and
Protestants of the North.
That, I think, is the full record of my regular newspaper activities,
except for one particular. I have not mentioned the fact that I edited
the official organ of the Liberal Unionist Party for about two years--a
monthly, entitled The _Liberal Unionist_. The paper was started
during the election of 1886. The work was interesting, if not
particularly well paid, and brought me into contact with most of the
leaders of the Unionist Party--Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr.
Goschen, the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Arthur Elliot, and Mr. Henry Hobhouse,
to name only a few of my colleagues on the Liberal Unionist Central
Committee. I never had any difficulties with them. They gave me a free
hand, and in return I gave them what I think was good value. As my work
enlarged I found I wanted help in _The Liberal Unionist,_ and
secured an admirable helper in Mr. C. L. Graves. This was the beginning
of our private and journalistic friendship, and, though I must not break
my rule of not dealing with living people, I may say here what a kind
and loyal helper he has always been to me, not only in _The Liberal
Unionist_ but for many years in _The Spectator_. All who know
him, and especially his associates on _Punch,_ will, I feel sure,
agree with me that no man was ever a more loyal colleague. No man has
ever succeeded better than he in combining scholarship and vivacity in
humorous and satiric verse.
While carrying on the activities I have mentioned above, I also from
time to time wrote for the magazines--for the _Edinburgh
Quarterly,_ for the _National,_ the _Nineteenth Century,_
the _Contemporary,_ and once or twice, I think, in the
_Fortnightly._ I even perpetrated a short story in a magazine now
deceased--a story which, by the way, if I had time to adapt it, might, I
think, make an excellent cinema film. The title was good--"The Snake
Ring." It was a story of a murder in the High Alps, when the High Alps
were not so much exploited as they are now. There were adventures in
sledging over mountain passes in mid-winter, and wonderful mountain
Palazzi, with gorgeous seventeenth-century interiors, in lonely snowed-
up villages in inaccessible valleys. As a rule, however, my
contributions to the magazines were of a serious kind. Very soon after I
left Oxford, I wrote my first article in the _Quarterly_. This was
followed by several more, for the old Editor, Dr. Smith, took a strong
liking to my work. Dr. Smith was a man of real learning and a true
journalist. Though it was the custom to laugh at his "h's," or rather,
his occasional want of them, he was very much liked in society. As a boy
I had made his acquaintance, I remember, at Lady Waldegrave's, though
this chance meeting had nothing to do with the acceptance of my first
article. Henry Reeve of the _Edinburgh_ also on several occasions
asked me to write the political article in the _Review_. That was a
pleasure. I was given a free hand, and I had the agreeable sense that I
was sitting in the seats of the mighty, of Sydney Smith and of Macaulay.
CHAPTER XV
THE "CORNHILL"
My editorship of the _Cornhill_, to which I always look back with
great pleasure, came as a complete surprise to me. Among the many new
friends my marriage brought me was Mr. George Smith, the head of the
firm of Smith & Elder, a man very well known in the London of the
'fifties, 'sixties, and 'seventies as the most enterprising of
publishers, the discoverer of Charlotte Bronte, the friend and adviser
of Thackeray, and, above all, the founder of the first cheap, popular,
literary magazine, the _Cornhill_. It was in the editorship of the
_Cornhill_ that Thackeray found pecuniary if not editorial ease,
and during the first ten years of its life it was the natural home of
much of the best writing of the time. Tennyson on one side of the
republic of Parnassus and Swinburne on the other were contributors to
its pages. But pre-eminently it was the place to which was drawn the
best fiction of the age. The planning, the enterprise, and very often
the inspiration of the _Cornhill_ came from Mr. George Smith.
Though primarily a man of business, he had an extraordinary flair for
literature. He was the last person in the world to have claimed the
title of a man of letters, or, again, that of critic, and yet he had an
appreciation of good literature and a capacity for finding it in
unlikely places which was sometimes almost uncanny. Just as some of the
greatest connoisseurs in the Arts know a good picture or an important
piece of china when they see it, though they are often ignorant of the
history or of the technique of any art, so Mr. George Smith had an
almost unfailing eye for good copy when it came his way.
Nowadays, there is comparatively little difficulty in running a literary
monthly on sound lines either here or in America. But that is because
the world has learnt Mr. George Smith's lesson. All can raise the flower
now, for all have got the seed, but at the beginning of the 'sixties the
_Cornhill_ had the quality of originality. It exactly hit the
popular taste; and in a very short time it was selling by the hundred
thousand, a tremendous achievement at that epoch. But though the
_Cornhill_ did so well and though Mr. George Smith's energies
remained as great as ever up till his death, the magazine had to own the
fate of many publications of its kind before and since. It met with
competition, and I cannot help thinking that it also suffered from its
proprietor getting interested in other things, especially in his
magnificent and public-spirited venture--for such it was, rather than a
business venture--the National Dictionary of Biography. Mr. George Smith
himself always looked upon the National Dictionary as a piece of public
service, and he put a great deal of his own time and energy into it. The
_Cornhill_, though always maintaining a high literary standard,
greatly altered its character after Mr. Leslie Stephen's editorship came
to an end. Its price was altered to sixpence, and for a time it was
purely a magazine of fiction, in which the firm of Smith & Elder ran in
serial form novels of which they had bought the book rights. There were,
besides the two serial novels, only a few short stories and light
essays, but these were only a kind of stuffing for the fiction.
In the year '96, however, it occurred to Mr. Smith that it would be
interesting to revive the _Cornhill_ and show that there was still
life and force in the magazine which had published some of Thackeray's
best essays, and his later novels--the magazine in which had appeared
novels like Romola, with Leighton's illustrations, and in which Louis
Stevenson had given to the world those first and most delightful of his
essays, afterwards collected in _Virginibus Puerisque._ Once more,
determined George Smith, it should become the home of good literature as
a whole, and not merely of readable fiction.
For his new series--the price reverted to sixpence--Mr. Smith wanted a
new editor. He was not one of those people who waste time over that
mysterious process known as "sounding" people, a process that seems to
connote a great deal of farsightedness, caution, arid discrimination in
the sounder, but which, as a matter of fact, is almost always a cloak
for indecision. That was not Mr. George Smith's way. He wrote me a
plain, straightforward letter, telling me what his plans for the
Cornhill were, adding without any flummery that he thought I was the man
to give what he wanted, and asking me whether I would become Editor. I
got the letter during my first visit to Cairo, in November, 1895. I at
once replied that if my chiefs at _The Spectator_ saw no objection,
I should be delighted to try my hand. My chiefs saw no objection, and I
set to work.
When I say "delighted," I am using the term in no conventional sense. My
head had long been filled with plans for the editing of a literary
magazine, and here was the chance to bring them to fruition. Besides, as
every young man should, I longed for something in which I should have a
show of my own and be able to try every sort of experiment--a thing
which you can only do when you are either starting a new paper, or
making, as was to be the case with the new series of the
_Cornhill_, an entirely new departure.
If I remember rightly, I actually stipulated with Mr. George Smith for a
free hand, but the stipulation was quite unnecessary. I saw during my
first talk with him that a free hand was exactly what he intended to
give me. No editor ever had a more delightful proprietor. Though he was,
I suppose, very nearly forty years my senior, he was as young as I was,
quite as full of enterprise, quite as anxious to make new departures,
and quite as willing to run risks and to throw his cap over the hedge.
Nominally I had to deal with Mr. Reginald Smith, one of the partners in
the firm and the son-in-law of Mr. George Smith. (It was a mere accident
that a Smith had married a Smith.) Reginald Smith was a good scholar,
had done very well at Eton, at Cambridge, and had gone to the Bar, but
he had not got his father-in-law's fire or his _flair_ for
literature, nor, again, his father-in-law's boldness. I was on the best
of terms with him and he was the most kind and friendly of publishers.
It often happened, however, in going over my plans for the new
_Cornhill_, he thought this or that proposal on my part might prove
too expensive, too risky, too radical, or too unconventional. In such
cases he always said that we had better take the decision to Mr. George
Smith. On the first occasion I was a little alarmed as to what the
result might be. I felt that Mr. Smith might naturally support his son-
in-law in the direction of caution, and that the appeal to Caesar might
go against me. The first example, however, was enough to convince me
that my anxieties had no foundation. I remember well how Mr. Smith at
once out-dared my daring, saying that he entirely agreed with me, and
not only thought that I ought to have my way, but enthusiastically
declared that it was the best way. After that I had no more trouble, and
it was I who in future suggested an appeal to the head, for I knew that
the result would always be a decision on the side of enterprise. Mr.
George Smith was never the man to be frightened by such phrases as
"dangerous innovation which might be very much resented by the readers"
Dangerous innovations were just what he liked, the things out of which
he had made his fame and his money, and he backed them to the end like
the true sportsman that he was.
There is nothing, perhaps, more interesting and more attractive than the
planning and putting together of the first number of a magazine. I had a
blank sheet of paper upon which to draw up my Table of Contents, except
for an instalment of a novel. What I was determined to make the
_Cornhill_ under my editorship was a place of _belles-lettres._
And besides good prose, if I could get it, I wanted good poetry.
In the prose I naturally aimed at short stories, memoirs (as long
as these were really worth having) and inspiring literary and historical
criticism. I always felt that there was very good copy to be found in
anniversary studies, that is, studies of great men whose births or
deaths happened to fall within the month of publication and so might
reasonably be supposed to be in the public mind. Another direction in
which I felt sure there was good copy, if I could get the right man to
do it in the right way, was in the great criminal trials of former ages.
Every journalist knows that a trial sells his paper better than any
other event. The daily newspaper could always forestall the magazine in
the matter of trials of the day, but there remained open to me the whole
field of State trials.
Besides these features, I realised how much the ordinary Englishman
likes natural history, if it is dealt with in the proper way, and likes
also to hear of what is newest and most taking in the worlds of science
and philosophy and in the things of the spirit generally. These,
perhaps, were fairly obvious features, but there was one other in which
I may claim a certain originality. In the 'nineties we were all talking
and writing about "human documents," by which we meant memoirs,
autobiographies, and, above all, diaries which, when written, were not
meant to see the light, and in which the naked human heart was laid bare
for inspection. It occurred to me that, though I could not get, except
by some accident, a human document of this kind, it might be rather fun
to manufacture one. I could not get a Marie Bashkirtseff to intrigue my
readers as the young Russian lady in question had intrigued Mr.
Gladstone and the rest of us, but I thought I could get hold of some one
who could write a similar sort of diary, which, though it might not be
so introspective, would be a good deal more witty. I therefore turned
over in my mind the people I could ask to write a "journal intime."
While I was in bed, experiencing the mental state that Sir Walter Scott
used to call "simmering," i.e., thinking about my work in a half-
hypnotic condition, I remember that the idea occurred to me. The man to
do what I wanted was, I suddenly felt, the wisest and wittiest of my
Balliol contemporaries, Dean Beeching. But he was not then a Dean, or
even a Canon or a Reader at Lincoln's Inn, but simply a country
clergyman. I wrote at once to him, telling him that I had become Editor
of the new _Cornhill,_ and asking him to write for me, under the
seal of secrecy, a monthly article in Diary form, which was to be called
"Pages from a Private Diary" In it he was to put all the best things he
could think of in the way of good stories, criticism of matters old and
new, comments upon life, literature, and conduct, accounts of historical
figures and historical events, all informed with _verve_ and
interest and all presented in that inimitable style, half-serious, half-
quizzical, of which Beeching was a master.
Beeching wrote back to tell me how much he liked the idea, and how sure
he was that he could not do anything of the kind worth my taking. It was
quite beyond him. I replied that this was nonsense, that I was quite
sure from his answer that he understood exactly what I wanted, that he
could do it, and that I should want the first instalment by the middle
of May. I further charged him solemnly that he was not to write the
thing like an essay but that he must make it a real diary, writing it
day by day, and making it in this way genuine reality and not an essay
with dates in it. In the end he consented to try his best. He realised
at once that it would be quite necessary to keep the diary as a true
diary--that is, write it spasmodically. I then again enjoined the utmost
secrecy upon him, saying that it was not only a case of "_omne ignotum
pro magnifico_," but also that secrecy was the best possible
advertisement. I knew that his copy would be extraordinarily attractive,
and I wanted people at London dinner-parties and in club smoking-rooms
to ask each other, "Have you guessed yet who the _Cornhill_ diarist
is?" I may say that my prophecy was exactly fulfilled, for not only did
the Private Diary get a great deal of praise on its merits, which were
truly memorable, but also on what I may call "guessing competition"
grounds--a vice or a virtue of human nature which I was quite determined
to exploit for all it was worth. I still recall my excitement when
Beeching's copy arrived. It was written in a beautifully neat hand (we
did not type much in those days) and accompanied by a heart-broken
letter in regard to the author and his supposed failure. I had only to
read two pages to see that, with his wonderful instinct for humour as
well as his scholarship and knowledge of English and classical
literature, he had given me exactly what I wanted. I wrote at once to
him, telling him what I thought of the Diary and that there was to be no
talk of his abandoning it. I should expect it regularly once a month,
for at least nine months or a year. Once more I enjoined secrecy. The
"Pages from a Private Diary" were, of course, afterwards republished and
did exceedingly well as a book. They may still be read with pleasure by
anyone who cares for good literature and a good laugh. All I need add
about the Diary is that I told Beeching to envisage himself, not as a
country clergyman, for that would give away the secret, but as a retired
Anglo-Indian who had come to live in a village in the south of England.
This kind of man might be as interested in the villagers as he was in
history and literature, and would be able to look upon them with new
eyes. A little anti-clericalism might, I suggested, put the reader off
the track and help maintain the secret. In a word, I rather suggested
the idea of a Berkshire Xenophon, a man who had fought battles in his
own day, but was now studying economics or philosophy amid rural scenes.
Nobly did Beeching respond. I think in the first instalment, if not, in
the second, he told a delightful story of a Berkshire labourer looking
over a sty at a good litter of Berkshire grunters and remarking, "What I
do say is this. We wants fewer of they black parsons and more of they
black pigs." Be that as it may, no person of discernment ever wanted
fewer Beechings, or fewer pages from his Private Diary.
Another innovation which I was very keen to follow up, and in which I
was backed by Mr. George Smith, was the habit of placing an editorial
note to most of the articles, in which I said something as to what the
writer was at and conveyed a suggestion (a very proper thing for an
editor to do) that the article was of unusual merit and deserved looking
into, and so on. For example, in the case of the "Pages from a Private
Diary" I put the following:
There are as good private and "intimate" journals being kept at this
moment as any that were kept in the last century. Unfortunately,
however, the public will not see them, in the course of nature, till
forty or fifty years have elapsed; till, that is, half their charm has
evaporated. The _Cornhill_ has been lucky enough, however, to
secure one of the best of these, but only on conditions. The chief of
these is absolute anonymity. But, after all, anonymity only adds the
pleasure of guessing. All that can be said of the _Cornhill_
Diarist is that he lives in the country, and that, like the author of
_The Anatomy of Melancholy_, he is _paucis notus paucioribus
ignotus_.
As a proof of the delightful things which Beeching wrote in his Diary,
out of his own head, as children say, I may quote the following:
8th.--My old gardener has at last condescended to retire. He has been on
the place, I believe, for sixty years man and boy; but for a long time
he has been doing less and less; his dinner-hour has grown by insensible
degrees into two, his intercalary luncheons and nuncheons more and more
numerous, and the state of the garden past winking at. This morning he
was rather depressed, and broke it to me that I must try to find someone
to take his place. As some help, he suggested the names of a couple of
his cronies, both well past their grand climacteric. When I made a
scruple of their age, he pointed out that no young man of this
generation could be depended upon; and, further, that he wished to end
his days in his own cottage (_i.e._ my cottage), where he had lived
all his life, so that there would be a difficulty in introducing anyone
from outside. I suppose I must get a young fellow who won't mind living
for the present in lodgings. I make a point, as far as possible, of
taking soldiers for servants, feeling in duty bound to do so; besides, I
like to have well set-up men about the place. When they are teetotallers
they do very well. William, my coachman, is a teetotaller by profession,
but, as the phrase goes, not a bigot. He was a gunner, and the other
night--I suppose he had been drinking delight of battle with his peers--
he brought me home from ---, where I had been dining, in his best
artillery style, as though the carriage was a field-piece.
He was equally delightful when raking in with both hands from old and
new sources good stories and good sayings. Take, for example, though
this was not in the first number, the following story of a young
Presbyterian:
Jack has a Scotch cousin, Donald, who is of a more metaphysical turn of
mind, as becomes a Shorter Catechumen. The following little dialogue
will show that he inherits the faith of his fathers:
_Donald:_ Mother, was Jesus Christ a Jew? _Mother:_ Yes,
Donald. _Donald:_ But how could He be, when God the Father is a
Presbyterian?
The "Pages from a Private Diary" were a very great success, in spite of
their author being ultimately discovered by Mr. Bain, the well-known
bookseller. Partly by accident and partly from a printer friend, who
told him where the proofs went, he guessed that Beeching was the author.
But proud as I was of the Diary, I am not sure that my greatest find was
not a wonderful short series entitled "Memoirs of a Soudanese Soldier."
It happened that while I was up the Nile I came across an old Soudanese
soldier--a lieutenant who had just risen from the ranks, and so avoided
having to leave the Soudanese regiment to which he belonged on a rather
exiguous pension. The officer in question, Ali Effendi Gifoon, was a
typical Soudanese in face and figure. He looked like a large, grave,
elderly monkey, but he was as brave as a lion and as courteous, as
chivalrous, and as loyal as an Arthurian knight-errant. All the time
there was in him a touch of the pathos that belongs to some noble
animal. Slavery made him sad just as freedom made him loyal and
grateful. I have seen many strange and picturesque people in my time,
but of them all AH Effendi Gifoon was the strangest. To begin with, he
was a slave-soldier, which seemed to carry one back to Xerxes or some
other of the great Babylonian or Persian rulers and their armies. He was
caught when a young man high up the Nile by one of the great Arab slave-
dealers and raiders of Egypt. The dealer sold him to Mehemet AH the
Pasha. He, like most tyrants of Turkish extraction, believed in slave-
soldiers if you could get the right breed, and, therefore, he was always
ready to buy the right type of man for his Soudanese battalions. In
order to keep his ranks full, the dealers caught young Soudanese for him
as one might catch young badgers or any other fighting animal "for a
gent what wanted them very particular." A village was surrounded, and
the children and young men pounced upon, and the rest who were not
wanted were either killed or allowed to die of starvation.
His origin was strange enough, but still stranger was a fact which I
soon learnt after I made the acquaintance of Gifoon, and travelled up
the Nile with him for three days. We sat talking late into the night, on
the top deck of the stern-wheeler mail boat, with a British officer
acting as interpreter. Gifoon knew only two cities besides Cairo. They
were Paris and the City of Mexico, It makes one's head whirl, but it is
the truth. It reminds me of a New Zealand patient in our War Hospital.
He made from our house his visit to London, and our Sister-in-charge
warned him of the dangers and temptations of the metropolis. He assured
her that he was all right, for he knew Wollaranga (his native town) and
Cairo intimately, and that he was "salted" to the life of great cities.
Gifoon's knowledge of Mexico came about in this way. Napoleon III had no
sooner entered upon his Mexican campaign than he found that his French
troops died like flies in the piece of swampy country between the coast
and the City of Mexico. Yet that fever-haunted track must be held, or
communication would have been cut between the French troops on the
Mexican plateau and the sea. In his difficulty Napoleon III appealed to
his brother tyrant, the Khedive of Egypt. Ismail, wishing to please the
Emperor, who could influence the French financiers, from whom he was
always borrowing, instantly produced a battalion of Soudanese soldiers
who were warranted to stand anything in the way of climate, or, if not,
it did not much matter. There would be no complaints if they all died in
Mexico, because they would leave nobody behind them with any right to
complain. Slaves have no relations. Accordingly the Soudanese were
shipped off to Vera Cruz, and there fought for the French. When the war
came to an end the remaining Africans were brought back to Paris to
grace Napoleon's spectacular effort to get out of his failure. Just as
Napoleon gilded the dome of the Invalides when he came home from Russia
in order to keep people's tongues off Borodino, so Napoleon III showed a
sample of his black contingent on the Boulevards, and awarded Gifoon,
the leading black hero, a medal given under the same conditions as the
Victoria Cross.
When Gifoon got back to Cairo, one of those strange things happened to
him which happen only in Eastern countries. The Khedive made the black
man of valour his coachman--partly to show what esteem he had for the
French ruler, partly to show how small was any achievement compared with
the honour of doing personal service to "Effendina," and partly,
perhaps, in order to show off his picturesque hero to stray European
visitors, for Ismail on the one side of his head had the instinct of the
company-promoter. He liked, as it were, good human copy for his
Prospectuses. When, however, Ismail's troubles ending, abdication began
and the re-making of the Egyptian Army, the coachman V. C. drifted back
to the army and was found there by the British officers who were turning
the Soudanese soldiers into some of the best fighting troops in the
world.
Captain Machell, who was foremost in the making of the Soudanese, by a
lucky accident happened upon Gifoon, saw his worth, made a friend of
him, and brought him forward. When I saw Machell in Egypt he not only
told me his friend's history, but added that in the leisure of a desert
camp he had got Gifoon to write down the story of his life. The old man
talked, and the young English soldier, who knew Arabic, or, rather, the
broken-down form which Gifoon talked, translated into English, giving
the meaning of what was said as clearly as possible, not in literary
English but in the straightforward style in which an English officer in
the wilds makes out his Reports. For example, when Gifoon talked about
regiments, or battalions, or corps, using in his Arabic dialect the
nearest word, Machell put down the expression which was most
appropriate, such, for example, as "_cadre._" This fact gave rise
to a very curious example of how easily plain people get bemused in
matters of style.
It happened that at the time my first number came out, I had a friend at
the Reform Club who, as a Civil Engineer, had spent a good deal of time
in the 'fifties and 'sixties in the Turkish Empire, and knew, or thought
he knew, the East by heart. He was fond of me and greatly interested in
my venture in the _Cornhill_, and also in all I told him about my
good luck in getting the memoirs of a genuine Soudanese fighting-man.
When I saw him after my new number had come out, I hastened to ask his
verdict on the memoirs. I found him very sad and distracted. "Strachey,
you have been 'had'--entirely taken in. The memoirs are not genuine. I
assure you they are not. They are the most obvious fake. Anyone who has
been in the East can see that at a glance." "But," I replied, "I know
they are not a fake. I have seen the man myself, and talked with him for
hours. I know also that Machell is a perfectly straight man and took
down exactly what Ali Effendi Gifoon said. The idea of his trying to
take me in is impossible." But he would not be moved. He was certain
that the thing was a fake, and said he could convince me. As an
infallible proof he pointed to a passage in which Gifoon used the
regular military technical language to describe the organization of the
troops under the Khedive. For example, the translator made the Soudanese
soldier in the British version talk about "military operations,"
"regimental _cadres_," "seconded," and so forth." You don't know
the Orientals as I do," said the old gentleman over and over again.
"They would no more be able to talk like that, Strachey, than you could
talk like the Khoran." It was no use for me to point out that nobody
suggested for a moment that he used the English words in dispute. How
could he? He knew no English. The phrases which were supposed to show
the fake were simply Machell's rough-and-ready method of getting through
to English readers the ideas that the Soudanese soldier intended to
convey. He used some Arabic or Central African phrase which meant "war,"
or "a body of men," and so forth, and Machell fitted them with the
nearest technical phrase at his command. No doubt a more artistic effect
would have been produced by using the Arabic word, or finding some
primitive Anglo-Saxon equivalent, and then explaining in a note that
what was meant was, in fact, a "battalion," "company," or "section." But
Machell, not being able to write in what the Americans call the "hath
doth" style, boldly used the only language he knew--the language of the
Reports, Schedules, and Forms of the British Army. To my mind, and to
the mind of anyone with literary instinct, the very fact that made my
old friend think the memoirs were a fake made me sure that they were
genuine. If Machell had written like Walter Scott, or still more like
Kipling, I should have had great doubts as to whether he was not making
things up and taking me in. As it was, I felt perfectly happy.
The memoirs, though they never attracted the public attention they
deserved, were full of extremely curious and interesting things, and
showed, indeed, not only the oriental, but primitive tribesman's mind
with a wonderful intimacy. The most curious thing in the memoirs was a
prophecy made by a Mohammedan saint. Though I cannot quite expect people
of the present generation to realise the full poignancy of this
prophecy, I think I can make the chief point clear. The memoirs, which
were written down in 1895 and published in 1896, contained the following
prophecy:
I remember the great Sayid Hassan el Morghani of Kassala uttering the
prophecies which were generally ridiculed then, but which are rapidly
being justified as events go on. Sayid Hassan was the father of Sayid
Ali el Morghani, who was at Suakin with us, and who is now so greatly
respected as the representative of this powerful sect of Moslems.
Sayid Hassan was undoubtedly possessed of second-sight and I implicitly
believe him to have been a Ragil Kashif, _i.e._, a man who could
penetrate the mysteries of the future. Wild and improbable as his
prophecies must have appeared to most of those who heard them at
Kassala, yet his every utterance was received with profound respect, and
gradually we saw one after another of his statements borne out by facts.
The burden of the Morghani's prophecies was that evil times were in
store for the Soudan. He warned us all "El marah illi towlid me
takhodhash" (Take not unto thyself a wife who will bear thee children),
for a crisis was looming over the near future of the Soudan, when those
who wish to support the Dowlah, or Government, must fly, and they will
be lucky if they escape with their lives. Kassala would be laid waste
four times, and on the fourth or last occasion the city would begin to
live once more.
Mahomed Noor, who was Emir of Kassala at that time, openly ridiculed
these prophecies; upon which the Morghani replied that all he had
foretold would undoubtedly come to pass, but that, as Mahomed Noor had
but a very short time to live, and would die a violent death, he would
not have an opportunity of seeing it himself. Being pressed to say upon
what he based his prophecies regarding the Emir's death, he said that
his end was near, and that Mahomed Noor and his son would shortly be
killed by the Abyssinians on the same day. The flame of _fitna_, or
insurrection, would not first appear in the Soudan, but the fire would
be kindled in Egypt itself. Then the whole Soudan would rise, and the
people would not be appeased until the land had been deluged in blood
and entire tribes had disappeared off the face of the earth. The work of
re-conquest and re-establishment of order would fall upon the Ingleez,
who, after suppressing the revolt in Egypt, and gradually having
arranged the affairs of that country, would finally occupy the Soudan,
and would rule the Turk and the Soudanese together for a period of five
years. The idea of the Turk being ruled by anyone was received with
special incredulity, and on his being pressed to explain who and what
these mighty Ingleez were, he said they were a people from the North,
tall of stature and of white complexion. The English regeneration would
place the Soudan on a better footing than it had ever been on before,
and he used to say that the land of Kassala between El Khatmieh and
Gebel um Karam would ultimately be sold for a guinea a pace. The final
struggle for the supremacy in the Soudan would take place on the great
plain of Kerrere, to the north of Omdurman; and, pointing to the desert
outside Kassala, which is strewn with large white stones, he said:
"After this battle has been fought, the plain of El Kerrere will be
strewn with human skulls as thickly as it is now covered with stones."
When the Soudan had been thoroughly subdued, the English occupation
would be extended to Abyssinia. Then there would no longer be dissension
between the people of that country and the Egyptians, who would
intermarry freely, and would not allow the difference in their religion
to remain a barrier between them.
The passage about the Ingleez in this prophecy, though striking and
picturesque, might be explained away by the fact that the Effendi later
became so strongly impressed by the power of the English that everything
in his mind was tinctured by this fact. Any vaticinations of changes to
be wrought by some great and mysterious external power would, after our
occupation of Egypt, naturally suggest the English.
What, however, is much more striking is the prophecy that the final
struggle for the supremacy of the Soudan would take place on the great
plain of Kerrere, to the north of Omdurman. When I first read that
prophecy in proof, the great plain outside the north of Omdurman meant
nothing to me. Not only did the re-conquest of the Soudan appear
anything but imminent, in the spring of 1896, but one was inclined to
believe that the advance to Khartoum would very probably be made by
water, or, again, would come from Suakin and the Red Sea. Lord
Kitchener, as it happened, made the advance by the Nile Valley,
_i.e._, by land and rail, and so had to cross the plain to the
north of Omdurman.
Though the plain of El Kerrere was in fact strewn first with the white
djibbas, or tunics, of the dead Soudanese, and later with their skulls
and bones, as thickly as a piece of sandy desert with stones--Lord
Kitchener's army had not sufficient men to bury the vast mass of dead
Dervishes till several years after--this might be put down as the
commonplace of picturesque prophecy. It was, however, a distinctly good
hit on the prophet's part to suggest that the Dervish rule would
literally be swallowed up by the casualties in one great battle at the
point indicated. That was exactly what happened. I remember well, years
after the prophecy, reading in the account of the special correspondents
that the field of Omdurman some few days after the battle looked exactly
like a plain covered with patches of white snow. Anyway, though
interested by the prophecy, it seemed to me at the time to be much too
remote and too vague to take much interest in it. When, however, two
years later, I read the passage about the patches of snow, I suddenly
remembered the prophecy, looked it up, and was greatly impressed.
One of the things which I am proudest of as regards the _Cornhill_
is the fact that I was able to discover three or four new writers who
later made names for themselves. One of these was Mr. Patchett Martin,
who, in a series of books, _Deeds that Won the Empire_, showed
himself extraordinarily adept at carrying on the Macaulay tradition of
readableness and picturesqueness in the handling of historical events.
Another "find" was Mr. Bullen, a man really inspired with the spirit of
the sea, and a man with a sense of literature. I remember, for example,
early in my acquaintance with him,--an acquaintance due solely to the
fact that I accepted his MS. on its merits and without knowing the least
who he was--talking to him about Herman Melville's _Moby Dick_--the
story of the mysterious White Whale which haunts the vast water spaces
of the South Pacific--a story about which I note with interest that of
late certain American and English writers have become quite mystical,
or, as the Elizabethans would have put it, "fond."
The story of how Bullen's MS. was accepted, and, therefore, how Bullen
became within a very few months, from an absolutely unknown ex-seaman
struggling to keep himself and his family from starvation, a popular
writer and lecturer, is worth recording. It shows how great a part pure
luck plays in a man's life, and especially in the lives of men of
letters. It is more agreeable, no doubt, to think that we are the sole
architects of our careers, but the facts are often otherwise. We are as
much, if not more beholden to luck than skill.
After the first number of the _Cornhill_ had been got out, we
became so snowed under with copy that I had to give instructions that,
though all the MSS. should be gone through, none could be accepted. I
told my staff that they must harden their hearts even to good short
stories and good essays, as we had already accepted enough stuff to
carry us on for three or four months. I was determined that I would not
start water-logged, or, rather, ink-logged! "All we can do is to send
the MSS. back, but give a word of blessing and encouragement to the good
ones."
Somewhat to my annoyance, as I was about to leave the office one
evening, Mr. Graves, who was my chief helper, forced a MS. upon me with
the words, "I know what you said about showing you nothing more; but I
simply won't take the responsibility of rejecting this. You must do it,
if anyone has to. It is too good a piece of work for anyone except an
Editor to reject." When I got home I very unwillingly began to read it.
I felt I should be in a difficulty, whatever happened. If it was as good
as Graves said, I should have to take it. But that would mean dislodging
somebody else whose MS. I had already accepted. I had, however, only to
read four or five pages to see that Mr. Graves was perfectly right and
that, whatever else happened, this MS. had got to be accepted.
Happily, I did not wait, but wrote at once a letter of congratulation to
the unknown Mr. Bullen, and told him I would take his story, which
proved to be the first instalment of a book. Smith & Elder, when
acquainted with what had happened, saw the value of the copy, got in
touch with Bullen at once, and very soon agreed to publish his first
Whaling book. He told me afterwards that when the letter arrived he was
in the direst of straits. He had practically no money on which to keep
himself, his wife, and his children alive. His health was in a bad
state, as was that of his wife, and he was in the hands of a money-
lender who was pressing for payment and was about to sell him up. He
had, of course, put nothing of this into his covering letter, but
somehow or other I had an instinct that the man was in trouble. Somehow
or other, his emotional struggle had transferred itself to me along the
wire of the letter. Subconsciousness spoke to subconsciousness.
Curiously enough, a similar impulse founded on no evidence has come to
me on one or two other occasions, and they have always proved
substantial. Anyway, I think I either sent Bullen a cheque in advance,
or asked him whether he would like to have one, and so the situation was
saved.
The discovery of Bullen was always a pleasure, but still greater was my
delight in the discovery of one of whom I may now say without
exaggeration that he has become one of the leading men of letters of our
time. The author I mean is Mr. Walter De La Mare. My friend, Mr. Ingpen,
who was then on the staff of Smith & Elder, and was detailed to help me
in getting up and getting out the _Cornhill_, came to me, after I
had been in office for about three weeks, and asked me whether as a
personal favour I would look at an article by a relation of his called
De La Mare, a youth who was then on the staff of a business house in the
City, but who had literary leanings and was married to Mr. Ingpen's
sister. I told him that I should, of course, be delighted, but that I
had outrun the constable terribly in the way of accepting MSS., as he
knew, for he wrote most of the letters of acceptance. I was afraid,
therefore, that however good his brother-in-law's work, I could only
give one verdict. He told me that he fully realised the situation, but
that he would be glad if I would read the MS. all the same, and tell him
what I thought of it.
Accordingly I stuck the MS. in my pocket. With a certain feeling of
dread that I might be forced to accept it, I took it out on the
following Sunday, at Newlands, and began to read. I shall never forget
my delight. I had been pleased at the Bullen find, but here was
something quite different. When I laid down Mr. De La Mare's MS. --
signed Walter Ramal, an anagram of De La Mare--I am proud to say that I
fully realised that a new planet had swum into my ken. I had had the
good luck to be the literary astronomer first to notice that the Host of
Heaven had another recruit. That is an experience as thrilling as it is
rare. The story was entitled "A Mote," and I am delighted to think I had
the prescience to pass it on to my readers with the following note, for,
as I have said before, I insisted, somewhat to the horror of
conventional people, in decorating the contributions of any new writer
with an explanation or comment. Here was my guess at De La Mare's story.
I do not mean to say that it contains the whole truth, but, at any rate,
it was a good shot considering the facts before me. Here it is:
Those who hold the doctrine of transmigration will hardly fail, after
they have read this story, to think that the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe
is once more abroad.--Ed. _Cornhill_.
Here I may add that these notes had a curiously irritating effect upon
the older and more rigid readers of the magazine. Mr. Reginald Smith,
for example, was quite terrified by the passionate way in which old
gentlemen at his club attacked him on the way in which the pages of the
_Cornhill_ were defiled by the Editor's "horrible little notes."
Nobody wanted to read them. They were either futile or patronising, or
both. They utterly spoilt the magazine, and so forth and so on. Mr.
Reginald Smith, though kindness itself in the matter, was inclined to
yield to the storm and to think that I had perhaps made a mistake in
breaking away from the established custom. I appealed to Mr. George
Smith, quite certain that he would support me and the innovation. He did
so; and I continued, though, perhaps, with a little more reticence, to
put up directing-posts for my readers. I am sure I was right. After all,
the ordinary man gets very much confused by new writers and is very
likely to miss a good thing merely because he is put off by the title or
the first few sentences. Yet all the time, the essay or short story at
which he shies is the very thing he would like to read if only it had
been properly introduced to him. In Mr. De La Mare's case, however,
there was no fear of being put off by reading the first few sentences.
If you had once read these you were quite certain to finish. I never
remember a better opening:
I awoke from a dream of a gruesome fight with a giant geranium. I
surveyed, with drowsy satisfaction and complacency, the eccentric jogs
and jerks of my aunt's head.
The performance is even better than this promise of strange things
strangely told. In the end it is not "my aunt" but "my uncle" who sees
visions, and visions whose subtlety and originality it would be hard to
beat. I will tantalise my readers with a quotation:
My uncle stopped dead upon the gravel, with his face towards the garden.
I seemed to _feel_ the slow revolution of his eyes.
"I see a huge city of granite," he grunted; "I see lean spires of metal
and hazardous towers, frowning upon the blackness of their shadows.
White lights stare out of narrow window-slits; a black cloud breathes
smoke in the streets. There is no wind, yet a wind sits still upon the
city. The air smells like copper. Every sound rings as it were upon
metal. There is a glow--a glow of outer darkness--a glow imagined by
straining eyes. The city is a bubble with clamour and tumult rising thin
and yellow in the lean streets like dust in a loam-pit. The city is
walled as with a finger-ring. The sky is dumb with listeners. Far down,
as the crow sees ears of wheat, I see that _mote_ of a man, in his
black clothes, now lit by flaming jets, now hid in thick darkness. Every
street breeds creatures. They swarm gabbling, and walk like ants in the
sun. Their faces are fierce and wary, with malevolent lips. Each mouths
to each, and points and stares. On I walk, imperturbable and stark. But
I know, oh, my boy, I know the alphabet of their vile whisperings and
gapings and gesticulations. The air quivers with the flight of black
winged shapes. Each foot-tap of that sure figure upon the granite is
ticking his hour away." My uncle turned and took my hand. "And this,
Edmond, this is the man of business who purchased his game in the City,
and vied with all in the excellence of his claret. The man who courted
your aunt, begot hale and whole children, who sits in his pew and is
respected. That beneath my skull should lurk such monstrous things! You
are my godchild, Edmond. Actions are mere sediment, and words--froth,
froth. Let the thoughts be clean, my boy; the thoughts must be clean;
thoughts make the man. You may never at any time be of ill repute, and
yet be a blackguard. Every thought, black or white, lives for ever, and
to life there is no end."
"Look here, Uncle," said I, "it's serious, you know; you must come to
town and see Jenkinson, the brain man. A change of air, sir." "Do you
smell sulphur?" said my uncle. I tittered and was alarmed.
Anyone who reads this and knows anything of literature will understand
the feelings of a young editor in publishing such matter, especially in
publishing it in 1896. At the present time the refrain that "All can
raise the flower now, for all have got the seed" is a reality. In the
'nineties work like "The Mote" was rare. Connoisseurs of style will
recognise what I mean when I say that what endeared "Walter Ramal" to me
was that, in spite of the fact that Stevenson at that very time was at
his best, and so was Kipling, there was not a trace of either author's
influence in Mr. De La Mare's prose. The very occasional appearances of
Stevensonianism were in truth only examples of common origin. He at once
made me feel that he was destined for great things. When there are two
such influences at work, happy is the man who can resist them, and
resist them in the proper way, by an alternative of his own, and not by
a mere bald and hungry reticence.
Mr. Walter De La Mare's second article was called "The Village of Old
Age." It was a charming piece of what I simply cannot and will not call
"elfish" writing. The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical
nausea. If, however, someone with a stronger stomach in regard to words
called it elfish I should understand what he meant, and agree. But, good
as were these two essays, they were nothing compared to De La Mare's
marvellous story, "The Moon's Miracle." That was a piece of glorious
fantasy in which the writer excelled himself, not only as regards the
mechanism of his essay-story, but as to its substance, and, most of all,
its style. He prefaced it by this quotation from _Paradise Lost_:
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky,
and armies rush To battle in the clouds; before each van Prick forth the
faery knights, and couch their spears, Till thickest legions close; with
feats of arms From either end of heaven the welkin burns.
The following was his short synopsis of the story:
How the Count saw a city in the sky and men in harness issuing thereout--
Of the encampment of the host of the moons-men-Of how the battle was
joined--The Count's great joy thereat and of how the fight sped.
The first sentences were these:
The housekeeper's matronly skirts had sounded upon the staircase. The
maids had simpered their timid "Good-night, sir," and were to bed.
Nevertheless, the Count still sat imperturbable and silent. A silence of
frowns, of eloquence on the simmer; a silence that was almost a menace.
This enough for any man of adventure to know that he is in for a good
time--in for something big. What he was in for in this case was a great
aerial battle seen from Wimbledon Common--an admirable _locale_ for
such an event, as I have always thought. I can best prove the depth of
the impression made upon me by the fact that twenty years afterwards,
when on some summer evening one knew that an air raid had begun, I never
failed, when I watched the skies, to think of the little group on
Wimbledon Common. It had actually come true. They were scouring the
fields of air in the story of fight. No doubt what one saw there was not
as exquisite a spectacle as that seen by the Count. Still, there was
always something thrilling and so delightful in scanning the vast
battle-field of Heaven in order to find a Zeppelin, or, later, an
aeroplane squadron. Here is the passage describing what the Count and
his friends saw, when they discerned a city in the sky, and round it the
tents of the moonsmen:
The tents were of divers pale colours, some dove-grey, others saffron
and moth-green, and those on the farther side, of the colour of pale
violets, and all pitched in a vast circle whose centre was the moon. I
handed the mackintosh to the Count and insisted upon his donning of it.
"The dew hangs in the air," said I, "and unless the world spin on too
quick, we shall pass some hours in watching." "Ay," said he in a muse,
"but it seems to me the moon-army keeps infamous bad watch. I see not
one sentinel. Those wings travel sure as a homing bird; and to be driven
back upon their centre would be defeat for the--lunatics. Give _me_
but a handful of such cavalry, I would capture the Southern Cross.
Magnificent! magnificent! I remember, when I was in it--" For, while he
was yet deriding, from points a little distant apart, single, winged
horsemen dropped from the far sky, whither, I suppose, they had soared
to keep more efficient watch; and though we heard no whisper of sound,
by some means (inaudible bugle-call, positively maintains the Count) the
camp was instantly roused and soon astir like seething broth. Tents were
struck and withdrawn to the rear. Arms and harness, bucklers and gemmy
helms sparkled and glared. All was orderly confusion.
I could go on for many more pages than I am afraid my readers would
approve to chronicle the joys of my editorship, and especially the joys
of discovery. I will only, however, mention two or three more names. One
is that of the late Mr. Bernard Capes. I think I am right in saying that
my story of "The Moon-stricken," which was published in the
_Cornhill_, was one of his first appearances before the English
public. Another author whom, I am glad to say, I and those who helped me
"spotted" as having special qualities of readability was Mr. Hesketh
Prichard. In this case my wife did what Mr. Graves had done in the case
of Mr. Bullen. After I had charged her, as she valued the peace of the
family, to accept nothing, but to return all the MSS. which I gave her,
she insisted upon my reading Hesketh Prichard's story. My judgment
confirmed hers, and in spite of the difficulties of congestion, which
was becoming greater and greater but which, of course, was my proof of
success, I accepted the story. There was, of course, nothing novel in
this experience. It is what always happens, and must happen, in
journalism. An editor is like a great fat trout, who is habitually
thoroughly well gorged with flies. It is the business of the young
writer who wants to make his way, to put so inviting a fly upon his line
and to fling it so deftly in front of the said trout's nose that, though
the trout has sworn by all the Gods, Nymphs, and Spirits of River and
Stream that he won't eat any more that day, he cannot resist the
temptation to rise and bite. You must take the City of Letters by Storm.
It will never yield to a mere summons to surrender.
The _Cornhill_, though so agreeable an experience, did not last
long. _The Spectator_ soon claimed me for its own. I had to resign
the _Cornhill_ in order, first, to find more time for _The
Spectator_, and then, to carry the full weight of editorship which
came to me with Mr. Hutton's death. Mr. Hutton's death was quickly
followed by Mr. Townsend's retirement. This made me, not only sole
Editor, but sole Proprietor, of the paper.
Before I proceed to describe the task I set myself in _The
Spectator_ when I obtained a free hand, and to record my journalistic
aims and aspirations, I desire to describe Mr. Townsend--a man whose
instinctive genius for journalism has, to my mind, never been surpassed.
CHAPTER XVI
MEREDITH TOWNSEND
Taking _The Spectator_ as the pivot of my life, I began this book
by a plunge _in medias res_. This done, I had to go back and tell
of my rearing and of my life in something approaching chronological
sequence. In so doing, however, I have striven to remain true to Sir
Thomas Browne's instructions and to keep the alabaster tomb in the
barber's shop always before my eyes. Now, however, that I have reached
the time when I became Proprietor and Editor of _The Spectator_, I
may fitly return to my chiefs and predecessors.
Unfortunately I can do this only in the case of Mr. Townsend. In regard
to any character-drawing or description of Mr. Hutton my pen must refuse
to write. Just before he died Mr. Hutton made me promise not to write
anything whatever about him in _The Spectator_, and though I am not
sure that he meant that promise to extend to what I might wish to write
elsewhere, I have always felt myself to be under a general and not
merely a particular obligation of silence. Mr. Hutton and I were always
the best of friends, and I regarded him with admiration as well as
affection. On some points we differed strongly, but on more we were in
full agreement.
Though I did not go nearly as far as he did in the matter of
spiritualism I had deep sympathy with his main attitude in regard to
things psychological. It was this fact, perhaps, which made him say to
me, half humorously but half in earnest, when he knew that he was
leaving the office to die, as I also knew it, "Remember, Strachey, if
you ever write anything about me in _The Spectator_, I will haunt
you!"
I obeyed his wish and clearly must always do so, though not merely for
this warning. Indeed, I remember well hoping that perhaps his spirit
might still be anxious, and might find it possible to revisit his room,
of which I had become the occupant. In this instance, at least, "the
harsh heir" would not have resented the return. As I sat at his table
late in the evening and heard, as we so often did in our river-side
office, wild gusts of wind blowing up the Thames, rattling my windows,
sweeping up the stairway, and shaking the door, I often caught myself
trying to believe that it was Button's half-lame step on the threshold,
and that at any moment he might fling open the door, put his hand in
mine, and ask a hundred things of the paper and the staff. But, alas! he
never came. As on many other occasions in my life, the desire to be
haunted, the longing to see the dead was not potent, efficient,
authoritative. But I must write no more of Hutton. If we cannot see the
dead, at least we must keep troth with them.
Of Mr. Townsend I am happy in being able to speak quite freely. I am not
trammelled by any promise. Before doing so, however, I would most
strongly insist that no one shall suppose that because I say so much
more of him than of his brother Editor, it is because my heart felt
warmer towards him. I had, indeed, the warmest of feelings towards both,
then. If anyone were to ask me which I liked the better, I should find
it impossible to answer. They were both true friends. They made a
great intellectual partnership. They were complementary to each other in
an extraordinary degree. It was quite remarkable how little either
intruded upon the intellectual ground of the other. This could never
have been said of me, however, who for some years made a sort of
triumvirate with them. I had a great deal of common ground with both.
That was all very well for a subordinate and a younger man, but it would
not have been half so satisfactory in the case of an equal partnership.
Hutton was occupied with pure literature--especially poetry--and with
theology and with home politics. Townsend, on the other hand, though he
was a great reader and lover of books, and a man of real religious
feeling, was specially interested in Asia and the Asiatic spirit and
foreign affairs. To these subjects Hutton's mind, though he would not
have admitted it, was in the main closed. Townsend knew a great deal
about diplomatic history and about war by land and sea, as must every
man who has lived long in India; Hutton's mind was little occupied with
such things. Home politics, as I have said, were his field and had his
deepest concern, while Townsend took in these no more than an ordinary
interest. Again, Hutton was deeply interested in psychology and the
study of the mind, whereas what interested Townsend most was what might
be called the scenery of life and politics. Townsend looked upon life as
a drama played in a great theatre and seen from the stalls. To Hutton, I
think, life was more like some High Conference at which he himself was
one of the delegates, and not merely a spectator.
[Illustration: Meredith Townsend, Editor of the _Friend of India_,
and his Moonshee, the Pundit Oomacanto Mukaji, Doctor of Logic in the
Muddeh University. (Taken at Serampore, Bengal, in 1849.)]
And now for Townsend the man and the friend. What always seemed to me
the essential thing about him was his great kindliness and generosity of
nature, a kindliness and generosity which, when you knew him, were not
the least affected by his delight in saying sharp and even biting
things. He barked, but he never bit. You very soon came to find, also,
that the barking, though often loud, was not even meant to terrify, much
less to injure. Quite as essential, perhaps, as this kindliness, and of
course far more important, was a fact of which I ultimately came to have
striking proof, namely that he was the most honourable and high-minded
of men. It is easy enough for any man of ordinary good character to keep
a bargain when he has made it. It is by no means an easy thing for a man
who has, or seems to have, cause to regret the consequences of a
particular course he has taken, entirely to overcome and forget his
dissatisfaction.
I can easily illustrate what I mean when I describe how, later on, I
became first half-partner in _The Spectator_ with Townsend and then
sole Proprietor and Editor-in-Chief. Within eight or nine months of
Hutton's retirement, Townsend, for a variety of reasons yet to be
described, but also largely on account of the fact that his health was
beginning to give way, determined that he would end his days in the
country. He proposed, therefore, that I should buy him out of _The
Spectator_ altogether and become sole Proprietor and Editor. As I was
some thirty years younger than he was, and on his death would become
sole Proprietor, subject to a fixed payment to the executors of his
Will, this was in fact only anticipating what would happen at his death.
He promised, meantime, to write two articles for me every week as long
as his health would allow, and to take charge during my holidays. The
arrangement appeared favourable to him from the financial point of view,
when it was made, and involved a good deal better terms than those
contained in our Deed of Partnership. At any rate, the plan originated
entirely with him. All I did was to say "Yes."
But to make an arrangement of that kind and to keep to it in such a way
that I never had the very slightest ground for even the shadow of a
"private grievance" was wonderful. Think of it for a moment. The
position of chief and subordinate was suddenly and absolutely reversed.
I became the editor and he the contributor. Like the shepherd in Virgil,
he tilled as a tenant the land which he had once owned as a freehold.
Yet he never even went to the length of shrugging his shoulders and
saying, "Well, of course it's your paper now, and you can do what you
like with it, but you're making a great mistake." His loyalty to his
contract, and to me and to the paper, was never dimmed by a moment of
hesitation, much less of grumbling or regret. He was kindness and
consideration personified. I shall never forget how perfectly easy he
made my position.
There was another factor in the situation which would have made it even
more trying for anyone but Townsend. Directly I became sole Proprietor,
I threw myself with all the energy at my command into the business side
of the paper, and within a couple of years had doubled the circulation
and greatly increased the profits. This did not, of course, take
anything away from Townsend's share in the paper, but it might very well
have made him feel, had he been of a grudging spirit, that he had made a
mistake in selling out when he did. As a matter of fact, the paper would
not have done so well under the partnership. I should have hesitated to
risk his property by launching out, and he would probably have thought
it his duty to restrain me. He disliked anything speculative in
business, did not believe in the possibilities of expansion, and
preferred the atmosphere of the Three per Cents. That being so, I could
not have appealed to him to put more capital into _The Spectator_.
In effect, we should each have waited on the other and done nothing.
However, the fact remains that there never was a trace of jealousy on
his part. I have no doubt that he occasionally wished he had retained a
share in the paper. He would hardly have been human if he had not done
so; but he never showed any regret of a kind which would have been
painful or embarrassing to me. Under conditions which might have been
most trying we continued and maintained a close and unclouded
friendship. It was unaffected by the slightest touch of friction. Take a
small point: he even insisted on changing his room at the office for
mine. His room, the room he had occupied for over thirty years, was on
the first floor, and this, he insisted, was the place for the Editor-in-
Chief, and so must be mine. I yielded only to his peremptory request.
Of Townsend's intellectual gifts I cannot speak without expressing a
keen admiration. It is my honest belief that he was, in the matter of
style, the greatest leader-writer who has ever appeared in the English
Press. He developed the exact compromise between a literary dignity and
a colloquial easiness of exposition which completely fills the
requirements of journalism. He was never pompous, never dull, or common,
and never trivial. When I say that he was the greatest of leader-writers
I am not forgetting that at this moment we have in Mr. Ian Colvin of
_The Morning Post_ a superb artist in the three-paragraph style of
matutinal exhortation. Bagehot, again, was a great leader-writer; so
were Robert Low and Sir Henry Mayne; and so also was Hutton. But these
men, great publicists as they were, never attained to quite Townsend's
verbal accomplishment. I fully admit that many of them could, on
occasion, write with far greater political judgment, and with greater
learning, and with greater force and eloquence. But where Townsend
excelled them and was easily first was in his power of dramatic
expression and what can only be described as verbal fascination. No one
could excite the mind and exalt the imagination as he did. And the
miracle was that he did it all the time in language which appeared to be
nothing more than that of a clever, competent man talking at his club.
He used no literary artifice, no rhetorical emphasis, no elaboration of
language, no _finesse_ of phrase. His style was easy but never
elegant or precious or ornamented. It was familiar without being common-
place, free without discursiveness, and it always had in it the note of
distinction. What was as important, he contrived, even in his most
paradoxical moments, to give a sense of reserve power, of a heavy
balance at the Bank of Intellect.
He never appeared to preach or to explain to his readers. But though he
had all the air of assuming that they were perfectly well-read and
highly experienced in great affairs, he yet managed to tell them very
clearly what they did not and could not know. He could give instruction
without the slightest assumption of the schoolmaster. In truth, his
writing at its best was in form perfect journalism.
But, all the same, Townsend both in matter and in style had his faults
as a leader-writer. Though he was never carried away by language, was
never blatant and never hectoring, he was often much too sensational in
his thoughts and so necessarily in the phrases in which he clothed them.
He let his ideas run away with him, and would sometimes say very
dangerous and even very absurd things--things which became all the more
dangerous and all the more absurd because they were, as a rule, conveyed
in what were apparently carefully-balanced and carefully-selected words.
His wildest words were prefaced with declarations of reticence and
repression.
It was said of a daily newspaper in the 'sixties that its proprietor's
instructions to his leader-writers were framed in these words:
"What we want from you is common sense conveyed in turgid language."
What the world sometimes got from Townsend was turgid thought conveyed,
I will not say in commonplace language, for his style could never be
that, but in the language of sobriety, good sense, and good taste.
Let no one think that in saying this I am being false to my friend.
Townsend's faults of judgment were all upon the surface. At heart he had
a great and sound mind, though sometimes he could not resist the
temptation to drop the reins on his horse's neck and let it carry him
where it would, and at a pace unbecoming a responsible publicist.
Sometimes, too, the horse was actually pressed and encouraged to kick up
its heels and go snorting down the flowery meads of sensationalism!
People generally went through three phases in the process of getting to
know Townsend. To begin with, they thought he was a man inspired with
the highest political wisdom and knowledge. His gifts of dialectical
vaticination made them look upon him as the lively oracle of the special
Providence which he himself was accustomed to say presided over the
British Empire. After a time, however, they began to think that he was
what they called too "viewy," too much inclined to paradox, too wild.
Often, alas! the feeling in regard to him ended here, and he was written
down as impracticable if amusing. That view, though probable, was
certainly false. Those who had the good fortune and the good sense to
persist, and were not put off by this discovery of a superficial
flightiness of thought, but dug deeper in his mind, ended, as I ended,
in something like veneration for his essential wisdom. They found again,
as I did, that he was very apt to be in the right when he seemed most
fallacious. After all, a house may be cool and comfortable, even if the
front door is painted in flame-colour and has a knocker of rock crystal
set in gold.
I may here appropriately point out how great an effect his book of
collected _Spectator_ articles dealing with Asia, and especially
India, has had upon public opinion. _Asia and Europe_ (Constable,
London, Putnam, New York) remains the essential book on the subject
handled, and every year its influence is widening. No one can understand
Asia or Islam without reference to its inspiring and also prophetic
pages. For example, I notice that Mr. Stoddard, in his recent book on
_The Revival of Islam_ (Scribner), constantly quotes Mr. Townsend
on the subject. And this, remember, is not due to any fascination of
style, but rather to the fact that many of Townsend's prophecies, which
at the time seemed wild and unsubstantial enough, have come true.
Though I have said that Mr. Townsend's style as a journalist was
perfect, and I firmly believe this, it must be confessed that
occasionally he indulged in paradoxes which cannot be defended. I will
not conceal the fact that these occasional kickings over the traces
personally delighted me as a young man, and still delight me, but, all
the same, they are indefensible from the point of view of the serious
man--that dreadful person, the _vir pietate gravis_. For instance,
it was always said by some of his friends, and I think with truth, for I
have not dared to verify the point, that he began his leader recording
the Austrian defeat and the Battle of Sadowa with these words: _"So
God not only reigns but governs"_
Another example of his trenchant style occurred in a "sub-leader" on a
story from America, which related how the inhabitants of the "coast
towns," _i.e._, villages in one of the Eastern States, had refused
to allow a ship that was supposed to contain cholera or fever patients
from New York to land at a local port. The farmers went down with their
rifles and shot-guns, so the story went, fired upon the sailors and even
the invalids, while they were attempting to land, and drove them back to
their ship. Townsend's leader on this legend, no doubt purely
apocryphal, was full of wise things, but ended up with the general
reflection that people are apt to forget that "mankind in general are
tigers in trousers" and that the majority of them "would cheerfully
shoot their own fathers to prevent the spread of infection."
No doubt, if you had asked Townsend to justify his statement, he would
at once have admitted that the language was a little strong, and would
have been quite willing to introduce some modification, such as "men
occasionally behave as if they were tigers in trousers," and to add that
"in certain instances some men might even go so far as to hold that it
might be a public duty to shoot their own fathers to prevent the spread
of infection." He was always rather sad, however, if one suggested a
little hedging of this kind when one was reading over the final proofs
of the paper. What he liked, and as a journalist was quite right to
like, was definiteness. Qualifying words were an abomination to his
strong imagination. No man ever loved the dramatic side of life more
than he did. He even carried this love of drama to the lengths of
honestly being inclined to believe things simply and solely because they
were sensational. The ordinary man when he hears an extraordinary tale
is inclined to say, "What rubbish! That can't be true. I never heard
anything like that before," and so on. Townsend, on the other hand, was
like the Father of the Church who said, _"Credo quia impossibile."_
If you told Townsend a strange story, and suggested that it could not
possibly be true because of some marvellous or absurd incident which was
supposed to have occurred, his natural and immediate impulse was to look
upon that special circumstance as conclusive proof of its credibility
and truth. His extraordinarily wide, if inaccurate, recollections of
historical facts and fictions would supply him with a hundred
illustrations to show that what seemed to you ridiculous, or, at any
rate, inexplicable, was the simplest and most reasonable thing in the
world. This leaning toward the sensational, which belongs to so many
journalists and is probably a beneficial part of their equipment, should
not be forgotten by those who are tempted to judge the Press harshly in
the matter of scare headlines and scare news. When something has been
inserted in the Press that turns out later to be a cock-and-bull story,
the plain man is apt to think that it must have been "put in" because
the editor, though he knew it was false, thought it good copy and likely
to sell his paper. In my experience that is not in the least how the
thing works. A great many editors, however, greatly like and are
naturally inclined to believe in "good copy." And, after all, they have
got many more excuses for doing so than the ordinary man realises.
Nobody can have anything to do with a newspaper without being amazed at
the strangeness, the oddity, the topsy-turvy sensationalism of life,
when once it is laid bare by the newspaper reporters.
For example, they write an article to show how astrology has absolutely
died out in England. A day afterwards you get a letter from some old
gentleman in Saffron Walden or Peckham Rye or Romford, informing you
that in his small town, or suburban district, "there are ten practising
astrologers, not to mention various magicians who do a little astrology
in their odd moments." And all this is written with an air of perfect
simplicity, as if the information conveyed were the most natural thing
in the world and would be no surprise to any ordinary well-informed
person.
But it was not only in outside affairs and in his view of the world that
lay outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of
odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own
existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost
that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always
for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black
cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!"
I remember well his pointing out to a member of the staff who is still,
I am glad to say, a colleague of mine, a delightful reason for the
arrangement of the furniture in his, Townsend's, room at 1 Wellington
Street, Strand. Townsend complained that his writing-table was in a very
cold corner, and that from it he could not feel the warmth of the fire.
It was suggested to him that the best plan would be to bring the table
nearer to the fire and to sit with his back to the door. "But don't you
see," said Townsend, "that would be impossible? I couldn't see who was
entering the room." As he spoke there rose up visions of Eastern figures
in white turbans gliding in stealthily and with silent tread, and
standing behind the editorial chair, unseen but all-seeing. Alas! we did
not often have such adventures in Wellington Street, but no doubt it
stimulated Townsend's mind in what might otherwise have been
insupportably dull surroundings to think of such possibilities. This
idea, indeed, of watching the entry was a favourite topic of his. I
remember his telling me when I first came regularly to the office, that
Mr.---, the then manager, who sat in the inner room downstairs, had a
mirror so placed that he could see all who came through the main door,
without himself being seen, and so appearing to place callers under
observation. At my expressing some surprise that this was necessary, I
was met with the oracular reply that though it wasn't talked about, such
an arrangement would be found "in every office in London." Of a piece
with this half-reality, half make-believe, with which, as I say,
Townsend transformed his quiet life into one long and thrilling
adventure, was a remark which I remember his making in the course of a
most innocent country walk: "If the country people knew the secret of
the foxglove root it would be impossible to live in the country."
Apropos of this remark, my painter brother, who had always lived in the
country and had plenty of cottage friends in Somersetshire, pointed out
that as a matter of fact the country people knew the effects of
digitalis as a poison exceedingly well, even though they were not
inclined so to use it as to make life in the country impossible. He went
on to tell, if I may be discursive for a moment, how, one day he was
painting quietly behind a hedge, he caught a scrap of conversation
between two hedge-makers who were unaware of his presence. It ran as
follows: "And so they did boil down the hemlock and gave it to the
woman, and she died." That was the statement: whether ancient or modern,
who knows? For myself, I have always wondered what the hedgers would
have said if they had suddenly had their rustic _on dit_ capped
with the tale of how the hemlock was used in Athens 2,400 years ago. Did
the "woman" of Somersetshire stave off the effects of the poison by
walking about? Did her limbs grow cold and numb and dead while the brain
still worked? But such questions are destined to remain for ever
unanswered. Country people do not like to be cross-questioned upon stray
remarks of this character, and if you attempt to fathom mysteries will
regard you with suspicion almost deadly in its intensity till the end of
your days. "What business had he to be asking questions like that?" is
the verdict which kills in the country.
CHAPTER XVII
MEREDITH TOWNSEND (_Continued_)
Though I cannot resist writing upon the picturesque side of Townsend's
character, I must take care not to give a wrong impression. Nobody must
think, because of Townsend's emphasis and vividness of language, and
that touch of imagination he introduced into every thought and every
sentence, that he was an oddity or an eccentric. In spite of the fact
that he would never take life plain when he could get it coloured, he
was a perfectly sane person. As I have said, the more you knew him the
more you felt that, though you might be shocked by the first rashness of
his thought, it would very likely turn out to be a perfectly sane
judgment--proper discount being allowed for his brilliance of vision. I
used sometimes to put some of his most wonderful and hair-raising
statements into dull English, and then ask him whether that wasn't what
he meant. I generally received the instant assurance that my sober
version exactly represented his view.
His attitude of mind might, indeed, be summed up by a thing that he once
said to me in a period of political calm in the middle of August in the
'nineties. "_Strachey, I wish something dramatic would happen._" He
went on to explain how he was fretted almost beyond endurance by the
dullness of the world. And yet I often wonder whether even he might not
have found the last six years almost too highly "accidented" even for
him. But I know one thing. If he had the anxious mind developed to the
highest point, he was essentially a brave man and a true lover of his
country. If he had been destined to live through the war there would
have been no stouter heart than his, and none would have given a more
stimulating expression to the spirit of the nation than he.
I wish profoundly that I had made during his life, as I ought to have
done, a proper collection of Townsend's aphoristic and sensational
sayings. They would have been not only a source of delight and
entertainment, but also a storehouse of what might be called the
practical wisdom of an imaginative mind. A good example of what I mean
is the following. Townsend was once having an exciting and not to say
violent argument with a younger man. In the course of the combat
Townsend, we may presume, used a generous freedom of language, and it
was returned in kind by his opponent. The clash of mind was fierce. Then
the younger man pulled himself together. He felt he had gone too far in
some of the things he had said, and apologised to Townsend. If he had
been rude or over-vehement in the way in which he had maintained and
insisted upon his view--he hoped he should be forgiven. "Not at all,"
was the instant reply. _"You have a perfect right to be wrong!"_
There was here a great deal more than a felicitous epigram. This
acknowledgment of every man's right to be wrong underlay Townsend's
philosophy of life and his religious attitude. Though, curiously enough,
he had borrowed a certain touch of fatalism from his intercourse as a
young man with the philosophies of the East, he felt very strongly the
essential freedom of the will. But that freedom he saw could not exist,
could not be worthily exercised, could not, as it were, have its full
reward in a man's own soul, unless it were a true freedom. Unless a man
had the freedom to do wrong as well as the freedom to do right he was
not really free. It was idle to pretend that you were giving people a
choice of freedom if you put restrictions upon them which would
effectually prevent their doing anything but that which the inventor of
the restrictions considered to be right; if the doing of the right
resulted not from their own impulse but from the application of exterior
force over which they had no control, no virtue, no moral force. "There
is no compulsion, only you must" meant to him, as it must to every man
who knows what truth and justice are, the utmost derogation of freedom.
I have spoken of the influence of the East upon Townsend's mind in
matters of religion. Though he never became a mystic, and had not
naturally the mystic's attitude or even any true understanding of what
mysticism is, as a young man he had looked through the half-open door of
the Eastern world not merely with wonder and delight but with a great
deal of sympathy. He went to Calcutta, or, rather, to one of its
suburbs, when he was a boy of eighteen, and remained there without
coming home for over ten years. In that time he acquired a fair
acquaintance with several Indian languages, and an intimate knowledge of
Bengali, which he always regarded as the Italian of the East. In Bengali
he was so accomplished that he was given the post of Government
Translator.
In the old daguerreotype here reproduced he is seen sitting, by his
moonshee, a Brahmin of the highest caste,--see the mystic Brahmin
thread which the Jesuits were accused of wearing,--from whom he learned
Hindustani and, I think, a certain amount of Sanskrit. With the moonshee
he had many long talks upon those subjects on which the intellectual
Brahmins have discoursed and delighted to discourse ever since the day
when Alexander took his bevy of Hellenic Sophists across the Indus.
Greeks bursting with the new lore of Aristotle--Alexander's own tutor--
at once got to work on the Brahmins and began to discuss Fate, Free-
will, the Transmigration of Souls, the nature of thought, the power of
words, and the mystery of the soul. The Brahmins met them half-way, as
today they meet any wandering European metaphysicians. Townsend had an
active, eager spirit, and he and the moonshee tired the sun with talk.
But there was more than eternal talk between them. They grew to be real
friends, in spite of an interval of some forty years. Townsend used to
say of the moonshee, "If there is a heaven, that old man is there."
Though belonging to the caste of the High Priests of the Hindu faith, he
was poor in worldly possessions. But though holy and learned he had no
touch in him of sacerdotal arrogance--difficult achievement, considering
the sort of veneration with which Brahmins of his exalted spiritual rank
were treated in Bengal.
To illustrate the depth of this veneration, Townsend was fond of telling
a story of how he had in his employment in the printing office of his
paper, _The Friend of India_, a high-class Brahmin engaged, I
think, as a proof-reader, at low wages. It chanced that on some occasion
Townsend was interviewing a very rich Bengal magnate, a mediatised
Prince, so far as I remember, though of comparatively humble caste. When
the Brahmin entered to bring Townsend a proof, or upon some other
business of the paper, the rich noble rose, and, as Townsend
picturesquely put it, "swept the dust off the Brahmin's feet with his
forehead." The Brahmin received the obeisance without the slightest
embarrassment, as a right entirely his due. "There," said Townsend, "is
the whole of the East." Fanciful shapes of the plastic earth, the wealth
and the power of the rich man, and the man of semi-royal rank, are
perfectly real and fully recognised, but they make no difference to the
essential fact of religion. Caste in its religious aspects is something
of which we English people have no conception.
I remember pleasing Townsend with an illustration of the truth of how
English people cannot conceive of great rank without a considerable
amount of riches. When reading for the Bar, I came across a short Act of
Parliament, in the reign of Henry VI, which was passed to deprive the
existing Duke of Buckingham of all his rank and titles "because he was
so poor." The two Houses of Parliament were sorry, no doubt, to have to
act, but they felt it was no more respectable for a Duke to go about
without money than for an ordinary man to go about without clothes. They
were doing the right thing by him in reducing him to the ranks of the
proletariat in name as well as in fact. English people, insisted
Townsend, never seem to realise that the distinction of birth is so
valuable because it is incommunicable. That, of course, is quite true.
English people, happily, as I think, never have, and never will, regard
mere birth with any veneration or even interest. What affects them is
that potent, if rather indefinite, thing, position--the aura of
distinction which surrounds great office, great wealth, and even great
learning; and, oddly enough, most of all by the acclamation of fashion.
The Committee of Almack's put the thing exactly, when a certain Duchess,
to whom they had refused invitations for a ball, writing in
expostulation reminded them of her rank. They simply replied that "the
Duchess of Newcastle, though undoubtedly a woman of rank, was not a
woman of fashion." It was only to "persons of fashion" that the doors of
Almack's stood always open.
Townsend's conversation was a curious contradiction. Half of it
consisted of tremendous generalities, which made the hearer gasp with a
kind of mental deflation. The other side consisted of specific
statements of the most meticulous kind. And these contradictory forms of
attack upon the intelligence with whom he was in conversation were mixed
together in the most admired disorder. I remember well a lady who met
Mr. Townsend for the first time at a luncheon-party in London, telling
me that at a pause in the conversation she heard him say of a Polish
actress, Madame Modjeska, then performing in town, "She has the most
mobile face in South-western Europe." On another occasion the oracle
gave forth this tremendous sentence: _"Musicians have no morals"_
but then, remembering a musician who was a close friend of his and mine,
Townsend added, "Except G--."
This is a beautiful example of the extreme generalisation followed by a
headlong descent to the minutely specific. If you had suggested to
Townsend that this was rather a large order, he would have replied,
without turning a hair, that you were no doubt perfectly right, and
would probably have limited himself in a lightning flash--"Statisticians
would probably put the figure at 27 1/2 per cent, or some such figure."
If he had been made to choose in his writings between the specific and
the general, he would, however, I am convinced, have chosen the
specific, for the specific statement was his leading rule in journalism,
as no doubt it was one of the sources of the charm of his style. You
should always be specific even if you could not be accurate, might be
given as an accurate parody of his principle.
This predilection sometimes led him into strange difficulties,
especially in medicine, where he loved to use all the "terms of art."
Technical expression had a fatal fascination for him, especially when he
did not understand them. I remember his saying, with a naiveté which was
quite delightful, apropos of a common friend in illness, "I have
discovered the nature of H's ailment. There is no doubt now that he is
suffering from the true Blankitis. By the way, Strachey, what is
Blankitis?" I am afraid in the case in question I did not know, and he
did not know, and in fact none of us but didn't know what the word
meant. (I have adopted the phraseology of the little boy when the
magistrate asked him if he knew where he would go to if he gave false
evidence.) But Townsend had no sympathy with agnosticism of this kind.
In spite of the vastness of his view, he loved placing things neatly,
correctly, and in order.
He used to tell an excellent story about himself and of the kind of
answer you are apt to get if you try to catalogue English people too
exactly, especially in regard to their religious opinions.
Twenty-five years ago [said Townsend], when I first came here on leaving
the East, I did not realise this peculiarity. I was very much interested
in finding out the religious views of all sorts of people, and
especially of uneducated people; and so I asked Mrs. Black (the then
reigning housekeeper at the _Spectator_ office) what her religious
views were. I expected to be told that she was either Church of England,
or Chapel, or Presbyterian, or something of the kind. To my surprise
this is how she met my inquiry. She looked me straight in the face, and
said, "I am a moderate Atheist."
By that name she always went in the secret councils of the office. After
all, only an English person could have invented that particular form of
religion. I always felt that answer would have delighted Voltaire and
given him another ground for quizzing English moderation even in
negation. I thought then, and have often thought since, how far the
principle of moderation might be extended, and whether you could be a
moderate agnostic or a moderate fatalist or a moderate logician.
Townsend had a capacity for wit, but, as he was fond of saying himself,
no sympathy with farce or mere high spirits. I doubt even if he had a
sense of humour in the ordinary meaning of that term, or in the
Frenchman's definition: "la mélancholie gaie que les Anglais nomment
'humour.'" To say this is not to say that he did not enjoy a humorous,
an ironic, a witty, or an epigrammatic story or saying. He enjoyed such
things immensely and would laugh heartily at them. But he had no use for
a "droll," as I must fully admit I have. I can thoroughly enjoy the
long-toed comedian, and feel quite sure that if time and opportunity
could combine to let me see once a week a film figuring Charlie Chaplin
I should be transported with delight. Good clowning, or even bad
clowning, or what people call the appalling, or melancholy, or "cut-
throat," jokes in a comic paper I always find captivating.
Of good stories and laughable stories Townsend was in many ways an
admirable _raconteur_. Many people would say that cannot be true.
On your own confession he was too much of an exaggerator. I don't agree.
Exaggeration is not a fair word for what he did to his stories. He had
in him a kind of mental accelerator, and upon this he depended, no
doubt, too much on occasion, as do so many motor-drivers. All the same,
his stories always got home, and, strangely enough, this perpetual
speeding-up of his mind never seemed to injure it or to wear it out. On
the whole, his stories and his quotations were splendid, though I
confess one dared not verify his dates and facts and quoted words, for
fear of spoiling a real work of art. Strangely enough, he was nearly
always accurate in the spirit if not in the letter. Some day I should
like to tell some of the stories that he told me of Lord Dalhousie, or
Lord Canning and the White Mutiny, and of Lady Canning as a hostess.
That Townsend was a masterly letter-writer this account of him will, I
feel, have already suggested. He was vivid, picturesque, and attractive
to a high degree. The place he lived in when he was taking a country
holiday was always the most wonderful place in the world and the people
he met there marvellous and mysterious beyond words. Even if they were
bores, they were bores raised to such a high power as to become
intensely attractive.
A curious example of the impact made upon his mind by the Eastern
religions was shown in his belief that there was a great deal to be said
for the Eastern view that Almighty Providence had entrusted the world
and its government to a "demi-ergon" or angelic Vizier, who was given
the governance of the world under certain conditions of rule which he
had to observe. I remember well Townsend once saying to me: "Some day I
will write a book upon the neglected religion--the religion which holds
God to have 'devolved' the government of the world on a great Spirit or
Angel." It was his belief, or an assumed belief (for the thing to him was
really a day-dream), that in this way the great antinomy between free-
will and that predestination which is implicit in omnipotence, could be
got rid of. Townsend thought that this matter had never been discussed
as fully as it ought to have been. I am not theologian enough to know
how far this is true, but I suspect that this is just the sort of point
upon which Townsend would have been misinformed. It seems almost certain
that every conceivable abstract point of view, in pure theology not
depending upon examination and observation, must long ago have been
discussed exhaustively. Not only did the Schoolmen and the Jesuits sound
every space of water, but the Byzantine Greeks in the early days of the
Christian Faith produced "heresies" of every imaginable kind. The union
of Semitic revelation and neoplatonic mysticism, first at Alexandria and
later in the City of the Christian Emperor Constantine, constituted a
forcing-house of theological systems.
Before I leave my recollections of Mr. Townsend, I want to say something
of a curious incident in his last illness; and I must also attempt to
describe his personal appearance. During the last six or nine months of
his life--he was nearly eighty and his health had been undermined by his
hard work in the Delta of the Ganges--his brain and memory failed him
almost completely. His intellectual life sank, indeed, to what was
practically a perpetual delirium. Occasionally, however, there would be
a lucid interval, in which he became for a short time truly conscious
and could make sensible and rational remarks. For example, on one
occasion when he was in the middle of a paroxysm of loud, violent, and
incoherent talk, almost approaching raving, he suddenly turned to his
wife or daughter with an apology of bewildering poignancy. "I do wish
that man on the sofa would keep quiet. I am afraid his noise worries
you. It worries me quite as much." Even stranger, more curious, and more
suggestive of the double personality is the following circumstance.
Though I remember his telling me only some six or seven years before his
death that he had entirely forgotten his Bengali and did not suppose he
could now speak a word of it, he talked when his memory went a very
great deal in the Indian vernacular and apparently with great fluency.
And here I may note that he was always very fond of correcting people
who talked as if the inhabitants of Bengal talked Hindustani, saying
that it was Bengali that they talked, that the language was entirely
different from Hindustani, and was also the language of some fifty or
sixty million people and not by any means a patois. On the first
occasion, when the doctor was present, when Mr. Townsend reverted to the
language of the East, Mrs. Townsend in explaining what was happening,
made a very natural slip, and said: "You hear, he is talking in
Hindustani."
Immediately there came from the bed a voice in Townsend's old tone and
manner, and making a correction quite in his old style: "No, not
Hindustani, Bengali." But though the true consciousness was, as it were,
on the watch and quite able to make a correction, its force was spent,
at any rate for the time. Nothing more was said for a long interval by
the consciousness.
Here I should like to put in a plea for a much closer psychological
study of the sayings of the delirious, the insane, and of persons in the
hour of death. Such words are not, as a rule, recorded and are often
passed over in fear or pity. This seems to me a great mistake. No harm
could be done, but, rather, a great deal of good, if nurses were taught
to record such expressions. This would result, I feel sure, in a greater
kindness to delirious persons and to those who are insane or on the
verge of insanity, quite apart from the benefit which would accrue to
scientific investigation. If people understood something of the double
or multiplex personality there would be less terror and surprise at some
of the phenomena of the emergence of the uncontrolled subconsciousness.
It might at first be thought that the doctor was the proper person to
make a record of the kind I am suggesting. But the doctor is, as a rule,
too busy to do this sort of work, and, what is more, it is not he who
generally has the opportunity to note the real expressions of the
subconsciousness or to witness the struggle between the two
personalities. Even in the case of delirious or semiconscious persons,
the patient, when the doctor is there, makes an effort and pulls himself
together and so reconstructs the normal personality. It is the nurse who
sees the patient mentally off his or her guard, and who is, as it were,
in a position to note the things of most value to the psychologist.
Townsend's personal appearance is difficult to describe. He had, from
the time I first saw him in '85, grey hair and a grey moustache. He was
a small man, wiry and full of energy, and in the first ten years of our
friendship quite capable of taking long country walks. He always wore,
even in the country, black or dark-grey clothes, which indeed
constituted for him a kind of uniform. His eyes were grey and glittered
brightly and keenly behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. These he never
removed, except for a moment of polishing on a large silk bandana
handkerchief. He smoked comparatively little, but was a perpetual snuff-
taker. Nothing was more amusing than to hear him discourse on snuff-
taking and describe his adventures with snuff merchants. In fact, snuff-
taking in his mind had become endowed with a kind of freemasonry. All
snuff-takers, he declared, knew each other. They were so few in number.
He was also very interesting about snuff-boxes, and the lost art of
making hinges through which the almost impalpable dust of well-ground
snuff would be unable to penetrate.
I might indeed have exampled his snuff-taking as a proof of his power of
endowing everything with a sense of adventure and pregnant interest.
His step was light and very quick, his voice pleasant and refined, and
his manner of talking, as may be imagined, what I must--in spite of the
associations--call arresting. The saying that if you had taken refuge
under an arch during a rainstorm and found yourself next to Dr. Johnson
you would have realised in his first ten words that you were face to
face with a man of true distinction might well have been applied to
Townsend himself.
But, after all, Townsend is not a man who can be described. You may
describe a Mrs. Siddons with a faultless profile, a great statesman or
writer with what an old family servant of ours called "an iron
countenance"; but it is impossible to describe the intelligence, the
nervous energy, the versatility of expression which quick-coming, eager
thoughts throw upon the human face. Who can paint a thought, or number
the flashes of wit? Townsend was to be appreciated, not to be described.
Moreover, he was a man who impressed you more the hundredth time you saw
him than on the first. It is the old mystery, the old paradox set forth
by Wordsworth:
You must love him ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
It was only when you had learned to love his wit and the gallant
cataract of his mind that you could fully understand and value its
fascination.
As a postscript to Townsend's oracular sayings I must add one of his
dicta on women. Here his generalisations were enormous and almost always
included a wild nosedive from the empyrean of generalities to that
purely specific element, the hard earth. For example, he was never tired
of saying--in various forms, for he never really repeated himself--that
women were far more trustworthy in money matters than men. He used to
say that he had never in any single instance in his whole career been
repaid a loan of money made to a man. On the other hand, he had never
been cheated by a woman.
It may perhaps be said that, considering I am writing a biography of
myself and not of Townsend, I have dwelt too long on my predecessor in
title. But, in truth, I have hardly dwelt long enough, for I am
describing the making of my mind. I could hardly be too detailed or too
particular in my description of Townsend, for his influence upon my
journalistic career was of enormous importance. Though I very soon
realised Townsend's defects as an editor, as a critic of public affairs,
as a man of letters, and as a user of words, my admiration for him as a
great journalist did not diminish but grew year by year.
I learned as time went on to disregard the faults and exaggerations
which so often greatly displeased the statesmen or men of letters who
had not the time or the patience really to understand and so to be
tolerant. Townsend had to some extent done what is very rarely done in
England, though it is so much done in America; that is, he had thought
out a good many of the problems of publicity and arrived at very sound
conclusions. If he had lived in America, I have no doubt that, with the
encouragement of a public that understands publicity, he would have
carried his ideas much further than he was able to carry them here, and
would have been hailed as a master in his art. As it was, he never wrote
anything on the function of the newspaper editor, and it was only in the
shape of sparkles from the wheel that one saw the tendency of his mind
to do what the Americans have done. They have succeeded in isolating
publicity and making it a special art, so that it has now become with
them a special art with special conditions of its own.
Townsend, as far as I remember, never talked about the ethics of
journalism or the duties of the journalist. It must not be supposed for
a moment that this was because he did not realise or respect those
duties, or was indifferent. It was rather due to the fact that he had a
kind of innocence, a _sancta simplicitas_, on this as, indeed, on
many moral and social questions. He took sound and honourable behaviour
as a matter of course, and he would no more have thought of praising
other people or himself for having a strict sense of honour in their
conduct of a newspaper than he would of praising them or himself for not
committing petty larceny, perjury, or fraud. He took, indeed, a very
hopeful view of mankind and did not the least believe they were really
bad, even if they did show themselves to be tigers on occasion. For
instance, I remember his saying to me once, with that naive gaiety which
was peculiar to him, that though he and Hutton differed a great deal in
matters of theology they never had any differences as to the line the
paper should take. Though Hutton inclined to an extremely "high" section
of the Church, to what, indeed, might be described as a kind of
sublimated sacerdotalism, and Townsend to a Broad Church
Presbyterianism, buttressed by an intense opposition to every form of
priestly function, he went on to point out that everything was made easy
"because both Hutton and I are at heart on the side of the angels."
Apropos of angels, I remember with intense delight one of Townsend's
most characteristic sayings. In the course of a conversation which began
on some mundane theme and drifted on to spiritual lines, I remember his
suddenly throwing the noble horse of dialectic on to his haunches with
the catastrophic remark: "Strachey, remember this. If there are angels,
they have edges." Here was the whole man. The idler or the fool will
think, or pretend to think, that this was simply ridiculous nonsense,
and will pass on with the comment, "We are not amused." As a matter of
fact, there was a great deal of good sense packed under a kind of semi-
humorous hydraulic pressure in this amazing dictum. What he meant was
that if there were angels, they were not vague, fluid, evanescent
creatures, some times part of a general angelic reservoir and sometimes
in single samples, but definite personalities. His was only a fierce and
violent way of saying what Tennyson said so exquisitely in the immortal
lines:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside,
And I shall know him when we meet.
There can be no eternal form without an edge. The edge, the dividing-
line, is the essential thing in individuals, and Townsend's mind had
pounced upon this as a cat will fall like a thunderbolt upon a mouse. It
was in this vivid, practical way that his mind worked. He jumped all the
intermediate things and came out with the essential in his mouth. But
those who had slow or atrophied minds and did not see the process often
failed to recognise what he was after, or what a clever kill he had
made.
CHAPTER XVIII
MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES
I have described how I came to London, how I became established at
_The Spectator_ Office, and what, before I succeeded to the
Editorship of _The Spectator_, were my various _extra_ activities in
journalism and literature. I must now say something of my personal life.
In 1887 I married. The year or so spent in my father-in-law's house, 14
Cornwall Gardens, where my first child was born, was very happy and
delightful. As my people lived either in Somersetshire or on the Riviera,
I knew "on my own" comparatively few people in London, though those
I did know were for the most part people to whom special interest was
attached.
It happened that my mother-in-law, Mrs. Simpson, was not only a very
charming person in herself, but, partly owing to a natural gift for, and
love of, Society, and partly owing to the fact that her father, Mr.
Nassau-Senior, the conversationalist, had been one of the best-known men
in the political-literary world of London and of Paris, from 1820 to
1860, she knew a very large number of distinguished men and women of the
middle Victorian epoch. By this I mean such men as Thackeray, Matthew
Arnold, Robert Browning, Leslie Stephen, Mr. Justice Stephen, Sir
Mountstuart Grant-Duff, Sir Louis Mallet, Mr. Lecky, Lord Arthur Russell
and his brothers--to choose a few names almost at random. The last-
named, Lord Arthur Russell, was the most kindly and friendly of men.
Probably without being conscious of it themselves, he and his
distinguished wife formed what a pedantic social analyst might call the
centre of a social group.
I shall, for this reason, choose the Arthur Russells for description in
detail. They were very old friends of the Nassau-Seniors and so of Mrs.
Simpson, and friends with a double liaison. Mr. Nassau-Senior and his
family had been throughout his life on very friendly terms with Lady
William Russell, one of the most remarkable women of Regency and
Victorian London as regards her beauty, her intellectual ability, and
her social qualities. When Byron wrote the graceful and lively stanza
which so audaciously recommends the gilded youth, who want to know
whether their partners' complexions are real or synthetic, to wait till
the light of dawn comes through the ballroom windows and then note what
it discloses, he breaks off to say that, at any rate, there is one lady
who will always stand the test, and adds:
At the next London or Parisian ball
You're sure to see her cheek outblooming all.
That lady was Lady William Russell--sister, by the way, of the unhappy
Lady Flora Hastings so cruelly caught in the meshes of an angry Court
intrigue based on the natural, nay, inevitable, ignorance and want of
worldly knowledge of a girl-Queen, the stupidity and lack of worldly
wisdom of the Court Physicians, and the blundering bitterness of a group
of Great Ladies--the whole assisted and inflamed by the baser type of
party-politician.
Lady William Russell had three sons, each destined to play, if not
great, yet important parts in the world. The eldest became the Duke of
Bedford. Though he lived in many ways a sequestered, almost hermit-like,
life, he was a man of singular ability. Of him Jowett was wont to record
a curious piece of private history. The Duke had said to him, that in
the course of his life he had lived upon all incomes from £300 to
£300,000 a year and in each category had been happy and contented.
Perhaps the best way to describe Hastings, Duke of Bedford, is to say
that he was a typical Russell, though a man with a Melbourne-like mind
would perhaps add that his untypicalness was the most typical thing
about him. The next brother was Lord Odo Russell, who played a very
distinguished, brilliant, and useful part in the diplomacy of the period
marked by the rise first of Prussian and then of German power. His son
is the present Lord Ampthill. The third son was Lord Arthur Russell. All
three boys were brought up in what might be called a nursery or
schoolroom friendship with the children of the Nassau-Senior family. My
mother-in-law remained in touch with all three Russells throughout her
life; but her special friend, partly because he always lived in England,
and partly because he married a friend of the Seniors, was Lord Arthur.
Among Mr. Nassau-Senior's Parisian friends was the brilliant and
distinguished Mme. de Peyronnet, an Englishwoman by birth, married to a
man of distinguished French family, who occupied an official post in the
post-Restoration Administration. Mme. de Peyronnet formed part of the
memorable group of Liberals of which Tocqueville was one of the most
distinguished members;--a group which from the latter part of Louis-
Philippe's reign to the break-up of the Third Empire comprised as
notable a body of intellectuals as were ever brought together even in
the city of Paris--the natural home of Social intellectualism. This,
too, was the group of which M. and Mme. Mohl were shining ornaments. M.
de Peyronnet was, I believe, a very charming man, but somewhat eclipsed
by his brilliant wife, whom I am glad to say I knew, and whose talk was
to my mind one of the most delightful of mental experiences. Poignant,
free, brilliant, and yet never pedantic or laboured, and, above all,
never trivial, Mme. de Peyronnet's conversation was a perpetual source
of joy to all who had the good fortune to know her and the ability to
understand her. She had three daughters, who all inherited their
mother's brilliancy and good looks.
Of these three daughters one, as I have said, married Lord Arthur
Russell, the next, and she, I am glad to say, lives in full intellectual
vigour, married Lord Sligo, a typical "great gentleman" of the middle
Victorian period. Except for his perfect manners and absence of any
traces of grandiloquence or pomposity, he might have stepped out of
Disraeli's novels, or let us say an expurgated edition from which all
the vulgarity and false-taste had been eliminated and only the
picturesqueness and cleverness retained. The third sister, Mlle, de
Peyronnet, never married, but remained the devoted companion of her
mother.
I am not going to imitate the pomposity of Lord Beaconsfield, which I
have just denounced, by talking nonsense about _Salons_, the
Eighteenth Century, or of the spirit of Mme. du Deffand or of Mile. de
Lespinasse living again in these fascinating women. I am content to take
them as they were and quite prepared to believe that they were not only
very much nicer women, but also quite as able and quite as brilliant as
those whom the spirit of Convention would be sure to name as their
prototypes. I am quite certain that, though they took a natural and
proper interest in history, it never for a moment crossed the minds of
any of them to talk like the ladies of the _ancien régime_ or to
imitate them in any sort or way. They were as natural and
unsophisticated as they were incisive, intrepid, and amusing in their
conversation.
Never has it been my good fortune to hear better talk than that which
flowed so easily from them, and happily, in the case of Lady Sligo,
still flows. What struck me most was the way in which anecdote,
recollection, and quotation, though not frigidly or formally dismissed,
kept a subordinate place in the talk and had to make way for comments
which were actual, original, personal, and therefore in a high degree
stimulating. Their talk had nothing of the flavour of the second-hand or
of hearsay, however good.
I had been accustomed as a boy to hear the best type of what I may call
old-fashioned after-dinner English conversation, from the mouth of a
master, Abraham Hayward. Hayward was an excellent example of the special
type of _raconteur_ who first became famous in the Regency period.
These men, who were chiefly anecdotal in their talk, are well described
by Byron in the immortal account of the House-party, _Don Juan_--
"Long-bow from Scotland, Strong-bow from the Tweed." Hayward was a man
of real ability, though in a narrow sphere, and with a remarkable power
of style. With him talk meant telling stories of Byron, Melbourne,
Castlereagh, Cobden, Bright, Peel, and later Gladstone, Palmerston, and
Lord John and other eminent Victorians. He told these with great
intensive force and was vivacious as well as concise. All the same, the
talk was anecdotal, and that can never be as stimulating as when it is
spontaneous. It was the difference between fresh meat and tinned meat--
the difference between a vintage claret on the day it is uncorked and
the day after.
Do not let it be supposed that by this comparison I am suggesting that
the talk of Mme. de Peyronnet and her daughters was naturalistic and so
artless. It was nothing of the kind. Though original and spontaneous, it
was the result, consciously or unconsciously, of a distinct artistic
intention. When they talked, they talked their best, as does the writer
of good familiar letters. Lady Arthur Russell was the most pungent
talker of the three, Lady Sligo the most reminiscent and, in the proper,
not the derived sense, the most woman-of-the-worldly. I mean by this
that she dealt most with the figures of the great world, but by no means
in a grandiloquent, consequential, or Beaconsfieldian sense. She had
travelled a great deal and seen an enormous number of people in every
country of Europe as well as in England, and, therefore, she was and is
more cosmopolitan in her talk than were her sisters.
Mlle. de Peyronnet was the most epigrammatic. She had the happy gift of
improvising in a lightning-flash epigrams and _jeux de mots_ which
would not have discredited the best wits even of France. I think her
repartee, or rather _jeu de mot_, at the dentist's, which went the
round of London, the best example I can take by way of illustration.
Most people are dreary and depressed in a dentist's chair. Not so Mlle.
de Peyronnet. Even here she kept not only her good-temper, but also her
brilliant imagination and, above all, her verbal felicity.
The scene passes in a Dental _Atelier_ in Paris. Mlle. de Peyronnet
must be imagined seated in the fateful chair, dreading the pain but
hoping for the relief of an extraction. But, as Tacitus said, that
morning she saw all things cross and terrible. The dentist, instead of
doing his work deftly, bungled it, or else it was the fault of the
patient's jaw. At any rate, the tooth broke off in the forceps, and the
dentist had to confess to his patient that all the pain he had given her
was useless. He had left in the root! "_Ah, mademoiselle,_" he
exclaimed, "_quelle Tragédie!_" But the patient, though suffering
acute agony, was worthy of the occasion. She did not pause for an
instant in her comment--"_Une Tragédie de Racine!_"
There have been, no doubt, greater and deeper witticisms than that, but
could anything have been happier, neater, more good-tempered, more
exactly appropriate?
I sometimes feel I would rather have said that than have written
Racine's _Mithridates_.
I have summarised the characteristics of each of the sisters' talk. Of
Mme. de Peyronnet, who in many ways was more brilliant than her
daughters, I will say only that she combined their several qualities.
When I add that her talk, like that of her daughters, was original, it
must not be supposed that she had not a proper appreciation of great
events or of great people. Her memories naturally stretched a great deal
further than those of her daughters. I remember well asking her whether
she had seen any of the human _remanets_ of the Revolution, some of
whom, at any rate, must have been alive during her early married life in
Paris. She told me that, though there were no reprisals after the
Restoration, it was curious how few of the Terrorists were visible in
the Paris of her youth. Some, of course, had gone to earth under
aliases, but most of them were dead. The Terror which the Terrorists
felt as much as inspired, the excitement, and probably also the
debauchery of the time when everyone felt, "Let us eat and drink, for
tomorrow we die," did not create an atmosphere in which people
cultivated hygienic habits or studied rules of "how to live till
eighty."
And then, I remember well, she corrected her denial. "Yes, but I did see
one of the Terrorists," and then she told me how she actually saw in the
flesh the man who was perhaps the worst of them all, the implacable,
irresistible Fouché, the man who had been an incendiary, an extremist,
and yet who was never in reality a fanatic or a profligate. Fouché
always dressed in black, and in a fashion which seems to have resembled
Cruikshank's caricatures of the Chadbands of the Regency period. He was
a loyal, hard-working servant of any Government which employed him. If
the policy of those he was working with was killing, he would kill in
battalions, as indeed he did at Lyons. Yet all the time he felt no touch
of the blood-lust which inspired men like Carrier. He would never have
thought of killing for the sake of killing, or of committing acts of
unnecessary cruelty. He was, indeed, a man of spotless private
character. He was guilty of no excess except the awful excess of knowing
no difference between right and wrong.
"What," I asked Mme. de Peyronnet," did he look like, and how did you
come to see him?" Here is her reply.
When quite a young woman I was in the theatre one night and suddenly saw
a great deal of commotion. People were standing up and looking about
them and talking eagerly. This commotion, I soon saw, was caused by a
very old man with white hair who was making his way through the crowd to
his stall. As he moved, there ran through the house the excited whisper,
"_Cest le Duc d'Otranto_."
That was the melodramatic title which Napoleon had conferred upon the
man he could not trust, but dare not openly distrust or dismiss, any
more than could Louis XVIII. Even in the calmest and most peaceful times
the Duke of Otranto remained menacing and terrible. The background which
I see when I think of Fouché is not the Convention or the Committee of
Public Safety. I see him as he is described to us by the youth who went
to Lyons, to plead with him for the right to cross into Switzerland. He
found Fouché busy. He was doing his best to execute the command of the
Convention to lay Lyons low, and to kill the greater part of her
principal inhabitants. Fouché, always loyal and always punctiliously
exact in his work, saw what a difficult job was the killing of seven or
eight hundred men at once unless by a well thought-out plan. The mere
collecting and dragging away the corpses for burial would be an immense
task. The plan he ultimately devised was admirably simple. He first made
the prisoners dig a long, wide, and deep trench--I understand that the
Bolsheviks use the same method. He then lined them up at the very edge
of the ditch. When the firing-party got to work their victims fell
neatly backwards into their long grave. All that was needed was to
shovel in the earth, which had been piled on the opposite side of the
trench.
The young man of whose account I am thinking uses language in describing
Fouché superintending the preparation of the trench which reads like a
paraphrase of Tacitus' account of Tiberius at the trial of Piso and
Placentia. "Nothing so much daunted Piso as to behold Tiberius, without
mercy, without wrath, close, dark, unmovable, and bent against every
access of tenderness." So stood Fouché.
When Mme. de Peyronnet saw him, the Terrorist had been entirely replaced
by the "civilised Statesman." What passed before her eyes was a very
old, white-haired man, with a regard deep and impenetrable. She added,
however, "I remember noting that everyone seemed to treat him with the
greatest awe." By that time, strange to say, he was one of the richest
and most respected men in France. Further, he had by his second marriage
entered one of the greatest families of the _ancien régime_, and
had actually been accepted as "one of us" by the inner hierarchy of the
French noblesse! He had even made his peace with the Church and become,
at any rate in all outward forms, perhaps _ex animo_, a devout
Catholic. What is even more astounding is that his second wife was as
devoted to him as was his first, and so, apparently, was he to her.
Fouché, indeed, may be said to have been an expert in domestic felicity.
The man is as inexplicable as the Emperor to whom I have dared to
compare him. Only, unfortunately for us, Fouché had no Tacitus to
chronicle his deeds of horror and his ineffable treacheries and his
complacent moderation in infamy. Would that the author of the Annals re-
incarnated could have given us pictures not only of Fouché but of
Robespierre, Marat, Saint-Just, Camille Desmoulins, Fouquier Tinville,
and the rest!
Nothing was more fascinating than to hear Mme. de Peyronnet talk of the
street-fighting in '48 and of how life went on, I had almost said, as
usual, in the intervals of the fusillades. She told me, I remember, that
when you were walking in a side-street and heard firing in the boulevard
or main street at the end of it, it was almost impossible not to creep
up what you thought or hoped was the safest side, and put your head
round the corner and see what was happening. Who is getting the best of
it in a fight is a question that will not be denied, though it may
easily mean a stray bullet in your head.
Speaking of '48, though it breaks my rule, I must recall an account
which I induced Lady Sligo to give last year to me and my son, of her
recollections of Lamartine during this very period. I happened, if I
remember rightly, to be comparing Lamartine's ceaseless flow of
admirable oratory with that of Mr. Lloyd George. Both men seemed to find
it possible to speak all day and manage affairs all night, without
apparently exhausting themselves. Inexhaustibility in the matter of
vital energy seemed to be the gift of each. Most men are soon pumped dry
by skipping from China to Peru, from Upper Silesia to the Lower Congo,
from Vladivostok to Washington. Not so Mr. Lloyd George, and certainly
not so Lamartine. During his amazing tenure of the office of President
of the Second Republic, he would make a perfectly correct and yet
perfectly sympathetic speech to a deputation from Ireland in the early
part of the morning, and to one from Chili in the afternoon. He always
contrived to soothe men's minds, without really saying anything.
Full of my readings of the Poet-President's orations and Despatches, I
asked Lady Sligo whether she had ever seen or heard the great man. She
told us how, when a girl of fourteen or fifteen, M. Lamartine, either
President or ex-President, I am not sure which, and his pleasant wife,
took a great fancy to her and how on several occasions she drove out
with them in their capacious landau. Lamartine's dress was marvellous.
Apparently it chiefly consisted of white duck trousers, which were
folded round his portly form in some extraordinary manner. There was
also a white waistcoat, and, as far as I remember, something in the
nature of a tight-waisted frock-coat. But what seems to have stuck most
in her memory is that the pockets of the white pantaloons were stuffed
with gold coins, and that these gold coins, whether in the carriage, in
the armchairs, or on the sofas on which the great man was apt to fling
himself, would tumble out on the floor. It was the duty of the younger
portion of the family and friends to collect the product of these golden
showers.
"Why," I asked, "did M. Lamartine make himself into a kind of walking
gold-reserve?" The answer was as curious as it was simple. Lamartine, it
may be remembered, was not only President of the Provisional Government,
but also the most popular man of letters of his day in France--a kind of
Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and Carlyle rolled into one exuberant
whole. But Lamartine, though he made enormous sums by his books, also
spent enormously, and in the middle part of his life, in order to
augment his always insufficient income, he founded a kind of personal
magazine, half newspaper and half institute, to which apparently people
from all over France subscribed. There was, however, no actual office,
except Lamartine's house, and the subscriptions, which were paid in
advance in gold, poured literally into his pockets, and were either
spent at once or put into some sort of receptacle which represented the
immortal and inexhaustible French family stocking.
Lady Sligo had the good luck to hear one of the daily orations by which
Lamartine governed France under ideal conditions. It will be remembered
that in the worst part of '48, Lamartine literally kept France quiet by
day and by night by speaking whenever and wherever an audience of
fighters or revolters or simple citizens were gathered together. Often
before have men incited mobs to violence by their subtle and deceiving
tongues. Lamartine is probably the only man who spoke _en
permanence_ not to inflame, but to pacify, not to intoxicate with
furious words, but to hypnotise into sobriety.
On one occasion when Monsieur and Madame were starting on an afternoon
excursion in the great landau, with Mlle. de Peyronnet wedged between
the white pantaloons and Mme. Lamartine's skirts (I presume I might at
that date have said crinoline), a deputation of _ouvriers_ suddenly
appeared. Lady Sligo described them exactly as they are to be seen in
Gavarni's wonderful drawings in _The Illustrated London News_ of
1848--strange beings with long beards and rakish caps, sometimes of
liberty and sometimes of less pronounced cut, with belts round their
trousers through which their shirts were pulled, and heavy, strange-
looking muskets in their hands. The queer crowd who surged round the
carriage were a deputation who wished to put some of their special woes
and difficulties before Lamartine, and to get his help and advice.
Doubtless they also longed to see their leader face to face and to be
soothed by the golden voice and fervent words. They greeted him with
respect and enthusiasm but immediately the cry went up, "_Un discours!
Un discours_!" Lamartine, who was always more ready to speak than
even the Parisian mob to hear, at once stood up in the carriage and
addressed the crowd. No doubt he harangued in that magnificently
platitudinous manner of which he was the master. Lady Sligo could only
remember the general impression made on her, which was that the great
Lamartine spoke with deep feeling as well as with conspicuous charm.
Very soon he had satisfied the wishes of the deputation and reduced them
to that peculiar condition which newspapers of the day described as
"fraternisation."
I have often wondered exactly what happened when it is recorded that
"fraternisation" became general. Apparently it was not very much more
than everybody shaking everybody else's hands and talking at once. You
felt happy and full of brotherly affection, and exchanged the
compliments of the Revolution with everyone you encountered. Even our
own forefathers did this on occasion, and not merely when they were
politically moved, but also at any emotional moment. Amazing as it
sounds, I remember my mother-in-law, Mrs. Simpson, telling me that when
she was a girl in the 'forties and 'fifties, she had seen people in the
Covent Garden Opera House so moved by the singing and acting of Mario
and Grisi as to rise in their places not merely to cheer, but to do
something which I suppose would have been called "fraternisation." In a
sudden burst of emotion they all shook hands with each other and, as it
were, congratulated themselves on hearing the Diva's glorious song or
Mario "soothing with the tenor note the souls in purgatory." And then we
talk as if these same people of the 'forties and 'fifties were
unendurably stuffy and stodgy! In truth, they were nothing of the kind.
Have I not myself heard the old Lady Stanley of Alderley describe how
when she and her people were having their luggage examined at the Genoa
Custom House, someone rushed in with the news that Byron was dead? Upon
this, everybody present burst into tears--not merely the matron and the
maid, but the men old and young. We all admire "le Byron de nos jours"
very greatly (I shall not name him for fear of the consequences) but
honestly I don't think you could now get the tiniest trickle of tears
down the cheek of anyone at a _Douane_, or anywhere else, by
announcing his demise. "Other times, other emotions."
But I have wandered far from the family of Arthur Russell and the double
ties, French and English, which bound them to my wife's family. Quite
apart from my marriage connection, I came in touch with the Arthur
Russells. Lord Arthur was a close friend of Sir Louis Mallet, and I have
already described my friendship with Sir Louis, first through his son,
and then through my own admiration for that able and delightful man--a
great charmer as well as a great thinker in the region of Political
Economy, "a social creature," as Burke might have called him, as well as
a wise man--a man who could be an earnest devotee of Cobden on the one
side of his nature, and on the other fastidious in a high degree in his
social outlook. But if I go on to express my admiration of Sir Louis
Mallet this will cease to be an autobiography and become something in
the nature of Bossuet's eulogies, so ardent was my cult for Cobden's
friend.
The Russells were also on intimate terms with the Grant-Duffs, with whom
I had become acquainted through the Mallets, and also through Sir
Mountstuart's eldest son, the present Arthur Grant-Duff, who was at
Balliol with me. He soon entered the Diplomatic Service, in which, like
his brother Evelyn, he has had an honourable and useful career. I had,
therefore, every sort of reason for liking the Arthur Russell family.
They were friends of my friends as well as friends of my relations. But
Lord Arthur Russell and his family were destined to be to me much more
than "friends-in-law." I had not been more than two or three times in
the company of Lord Arthur without feeling that attraction towards him
which a young man sometimes experiences, and if he does, always with
high satisfaction, in the case of a man or woman belonging to an older
generation. I am proud to think that he liked me almost at first sight,
I am not vain enough to say, as much as I liked him, but, at any rate,
quite enough to create a sense of social relationship exceedingly
flattering as well as exceedingly delightful. I was just entering the
intellectual world of London, and knew that it was no small thing to get
at once on the best of terms with a man like Arthur Russell. He had
known and knew almost everybody worth knowing in London, in Paris, and
in most of the European capitals from Berlin to Rome. By this I do not
mean social grandees, but the true men of light and leading, in science,
literature, the Arts, philosophy, and politics.
Though Lord Arthur never held office, he had been for many years a
Liberal Member of Parliament, and had also been a member of almost every
literary and political club in London, such as "The Club," "Grignon's,"
"The Breakfast Club," and so on. Besides his literary and historical
sympathies and interests, he was a man devoted to natural history, and
had a great many friends on this side of knowledge. He was also a friend
both of Hutton and of Townsend, always a diligent reader and a fairly
frequent contributor to the columns of _The Spectator_, which made
yet another tie between us. Finally, Lord Arthur, hitherto a very loyal,
if sometimes critical, supporter of Mr. Gladstone, became, as I had
become, a Liberal Unionist. He followed, that is, Lord Hartington into
opposition on the Home Rule question. But I, as a member of the Liberal
Unionist Committee and Editor of _The Liberal Unionist_,--the organ
of our new Party,--had a position amongst Liberal Unionists rather
above what might have been expected at my age. I was then about twenty-
seven--a position which brought me into touch with Lord Hartington, Mr.
Bright, the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Chamberlain, and, in fact, all the
Liberal and Radical Unionists of the day. Finally and, as it were, to
cement my wife's old and my new friendship with the Arthur Russells, I
bought a piece of land on which to build a Saturday-to-Monday cottage,
which, though I did not fully realise it at the moment, was close to the
Arthur Russells' Surrey house, The Ridgeway.
No sooner had we pitched our tent in what was then the fascinating
wilderness of Newlands Corner, than we discovered that we were only an
easy Sunday afternoon walk from our friends. Soon it became a fixed
habit with us, from which I think we never varied, to descend from our
Downs every Sunday and walk by a series of delightful bridle-paths to
The Ridgeway for tea--a serious institution in a family where there were
two girls and four boys.
At the Arthur Russells, when re-enforced by Mme. and Mile, de Peyronnet,
Lady Sligo, who had also settled in Surrey, one heard talk such as I
have never known bettered and very seldom equalled. Nothing could have
been easier or more stimulating. Those were gatherings at which no one
assumed the attitude described in _The Rejected Addresses_:
I am a blessed Glendoveer.
'Tis mine to speak and yours to hear.
I was, except for the Russell boys and girls and my own wife, the
youngest member of the party, but I was always made to feel at The
Ridgeway that they were as willing to hear as even I was willing to
talk, which, as my friends will vouch, was saying a good deal. I was, in
truth, bursting to give my view, as a young man should be, on a hundred
subjects. The intellectual world lay all before me. But though
Providence was my guide, I was not yet confined to any fixed course, but
with joyous inconsequence raced up and down the paths of the Dialectical
Paradise as unconscious and as unashamed as a colt in a green meadow.
Lord Arthur Russell, though a man of a gentle, tranquil spirit, had a
great sympathy with youth. He was, like all his race, a Whig, and a
Moderate, in every human function and aspiration. He did not, however,
allow that liberal spirit to be dimmed by fear or by selfishness. He was
one of those fortunate men who are not awed by rumour or carried away by
prejudice. Still less was there any touch of pride or vulgarity in his
nature Meanness and commonness of mind were as far from him as from any
man I have ever known. Yet there was nothing either of the recluse or of
the saint about him. He was not afraid to look on life, and its
realities, and he took the very greatest interest, not only in what
concerned _homo sapiens_, but also _homo natumlis_. He loved
good stories and told good stories, and loved also to analyse and
comment upon the actions of the great men of his own day and of past
days, for it need hardly be said that as the nephew of Lord John
Russell, the son of Lady William Russell, and the cousin of half the
politicians of his day, he was the repository of every sort of social
and political tradition. He was an extraordinarily accurate man, and by
no means willing to pick up, or record, or pass on stray pieces of
gossip about historical people, without verification.
Lord Arthur's first-hand and personal recollections, though never of the
tiresome kind, had often great poignancy and actuality. I remember being
thrilled by an account which he had had direct from his uncle, Lord John
Russell, of the latter's visit to Napoleon at Elba in the early part of
1815. The interview, of course, made a great impression upon him and the
account he gave was vivid and picturesque. I must omit a detail which
shows what a dirty savage Napoleon was, and how he maintained even in
his little _palazzo_ at Elba the manners not only of the camp, but
of the rudest soldier. In describing this episode, which would have been
too trivial for narration if not so nasty, Lord John was wont to say, "I
was very much surprised." It must be remembered here that not only in
1815, but even fifty years before (witness the testimony both of Dr.
Johnson and Horace Walpole), Englishmen were apt to be shocked by
continental habits in the matter of personal cleanliness.
Another detail, however, is quite fit to tell. Napoleon knew quite well
that the brother of the Duke of Bedford and a Member of the House of
Commons was an important person, and was accordingly exceedingly civil
to the young man. But Lord John told his nephew that very early in the
conversation Napoleon seized him by the ear and held it almost all the
time he was talking, or rather, pouring forth one of his streams of
familiar eloquence as to the harshness and cruelty of the Allies.
Napoleon, when he was cross, would sometimes wring people's ears till
they screamed for pain. Talleyrand, for example, was on one occasion,
when held by the ear, so much hurt as to be deprived of his habitual
insensibility to Napoleon's insults, and gave vent to the famous aside,
"What a pity that so great a man should have been so badly brought up!"
In any case, Lord John's ear, though held for ten or twelve minutes, was
not screwed up. I remember when I heard the story, thirty years ago, at
once asking the question, "Which ear was it he held?" That sounded
almost to myself as I asked it a silly question, but, as the reply
showed, it was not. Lord Arthur replied, "That is curious. It is exactly
the question I asked my uncle, and he, instead of treating it as
trivial, answered as if it was a matter of the first importance, 'My
left ear.'" Certainly it seems to me a strong link with the past. Here
was Lord Arthur, who would not have been much over eighty if he had
lived till today, who had seen a piece of human flesh which had actually
been held by the Corsican Tamerlane.
Lord Arthur once showed his belief in my discretion and also his
divination that I was not one of the supercilious intellectuals who
think details of family history are tiresome and unimportant, in a way
which greatly pleased me. He confided to me the true story, which he had
had from various people of the older generation who knew the facts, as
to the relations between the two Duchesses of Devonshire. The elder
Duchess, Georgiana, was the Juno of the Whigs. It would be folly to call
her the Madonna of the Whigs. It was at her eyes that the coal porter at
the Westminster Election wanted to light his pipe. Sir Joshua
immortalised her in his picture of the young mother and her child. To
her the mystic poet and philosopher bent the knee of admiration, in the
enchanting couplet:
Oh, lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, Where got you that heroic
measure?
The other Duchess was born Elizabeth Harvey--the woman whose eyes still
scintillate also from Sir Joshua's canvas, with an energy so
overwhelming as to be uncanny--the woman who fascinated without actual
beauty, but whose smile might have embroiled the world--the woman who
stirred even the sluggish Gibbon and made him say, with a personal
vivacity and poignancy which is unique in his writings, that if she had
entered the House of Lords and beckoned the Lord Chancellor to leave the
Woolsack and follow her, he must have obeyed. Gibbon had evidently
racked his brains to think of the most audacious act of which a woman
could be capable, and that quaintly proved in his case to be the
enchantment of a Lord Chancellor! If, at the present moment, there is a
lady possessed of charms equal to those of Elizabeth Duchess of
Devonshire, let us hope that the precincts of both the Lords and the
Commons Houses are well guarded!
I shall not on the present occasion say more than that Lord Arthur gave
me a note of the true facts of the story, to which many allusions,
generally incorrect, have appeared in various memoirs--a story of
incidents which, strangely enough, quite possibly affected the history
of the world. These incidents had as their sequel the appointment of the
son of a well-known Scottish doctor, Dr. Moore, to an Infantry regiment.
That Infantry subaltern became Sir Thomas Moore the man who lost his
life in saving the British Empire, and first taught the people of these
islands and then, what is more important, the whole of Europe, that
there was nothing invincible about the troops of Napoleon, when they
were faced by British regiments properly trained, as Moore trained them
at Shorncliff. Just as the destruction of the Spartan Hoplites in the
Island of Sphacteria broke the military spell cast by the armies of
Sparta, so Moore's victorious retreat to, and action at, Corunna broke
the spell of the Napoleonic Legions.
Though I have Lord Arthur's notes, and though he in no way bound me to
secrecy, they want an interval longer than a hundred and ten years
"prior to publication." Therefore they will rest in my safe, or wherever
else they may have been affectionately mislaid, and where it would
probably take a day's hard work to find them. There is no such secrecy
and security as "filing for future reference." When the notes are found
by my literary executors, they will please remember that they should not
be given to the public until they have ample assurance that the head of
the Devonshire family sees no objection. It is not a family skeleton in
any sense, but till family facts become historic, the utmost discretion
is demanded alike by courtesy and good feeling.
I had, alas! no sooner fully realised that I had made a friend in Lord
Arthur and that I might look forward to many years of intimate
intercourse with a man of knowledge and sympathy, from whom I could
learn much and in the most fascinating and delightful way, than the end
came. A short illness, followed by a rapid operation--hopeless, or
almost hopeless--cut short this honourable and gracious life. I was one
of the very few people whom Lord Arthur asked to see in the few days
allowed him between life and death. He wanted to see me out of pure
friendliness, to talk about his children and to show me, as only such an
act could, that he, like me, had hoped much from our friendship. He was
the kind of man who would be sure to prefer saying this by deed rather
than by word.
But for the simplicity and essential nobility of character which he
possessed, he might well have sent for me to see how a good man could
die. There was everything to strengthen and so to quiet one in the way
in which he faced the message which comes to all--a message so deeply
dreaded by most of us, yet which, when it does come, proves to be not a
sentence, but a reprieve--the mandatory word that does not imprison us,
but sets us free, which flings the gates and lets us see the open
heaven, instead of the walls and vaulted ceiling of the cells of which
we have been the inhabitants.
But though the very last thing that Lord Arthur was thinking about was
the impression upon my mind, that impression was intense both in kind
and in degree. That short last talk at his bedside, in which so little
was said, so much felt by both of us, has never left my memory. If for
no other reason, it must be recorded here for it had, I feel, an
essential if undefinable influence upon my life.
CHAPTER XIX
MY LIFE IN LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES (_Continued_)
I am afraid that throughout these memoirs I have talked too much about
the volumes which I might fill, but am not filling. Yet I must do so
once more in this chapter. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Simpson, was an
admirable talker and full of clear and interesting memories. I had no
sooner entered the Simpson house and family than I found that there were
a hundred points of sympathy between us. She had known everybody in
London, who was worth knowing, through her father, Mr. Nassau-Senior,
and had visited with him--she acted for some twenty years as his social
companion owing to her mother's ill-health--most of the political
country-houses in England, and had known in London everyone worth
knowing on the Whig side, and most of the neutrals. Macaulay was one of
her father's closest friends; so was the third Lord Lansdowne, the Lord
Henry Petty of the Cabinets of the'thirties and 'forties--Lord Aberdeen,
Lord John Russell, and Lord Palmerston, and, earlier, Lord Melbourne,
Lord St. Leonards, Lord Denman, and Lord Campbell, to mention only a few
names and at random. It was her father's habit to ride every day in the
Park for reasons hygienic and social, and she rode with him. There they
were sure to be joined by the Whig statesmen who sought Senior's advice
on economic points. She saw little of the Tories,--except perhaps Mr.
Gladstone, soon to become a Liberal, and Sir Robert Peel. Disraeli was
of course, in those days, considered by the strict Whigs as
"impossible"--a "charlatan," and "adventurer," almost "impostor."
In the world of letters she saw much of Sydney Smith, who was early a
friend of her father's. She actually had the good fortune, while Miss
Minnie Senior, to stop at the Combe Florey Rectory, and to discover that
the eminent wit took as much trouble to amuse his own family when alone
as to set the tables of Mayfair upon a roar. He liked to tease his girl
guest by telling her that her father, then a Master in Chancery, did not
care a straw for his daughter _"Minnie." "De Minimis non curat
Lex"_--"the Master does not care for Minnie"--was a favourite
travesty of the well-known maxim.
Rogers was also a friend, and as a girl she remembered going to his
"very small" breakfast-parties, in the celebrated dining-room in which
hung his famous pictures.
They were hung high, so as to get the light which was at the top of the
room. It was this arrangement, by the way, that made Sydney Smith say
that Rogers' dining-room was like Heaven and its opposite. There were
gods and angels in the upper part, but below was "gnashing of teeth."
While Rogers talked about his pictures, he would have them taken down by
his man-servant, Edmond, and placed upon a chair at his side, or almost
upon the lap of his guest, so that he might lecture about them at his
ease. Mrs. Simpson often told me of the horror she felt as a girl lest
she should throw a spoonful of soup over a Raphael or by an accident run
a knife or a fork into the immortal canvas! She had not learnt that
pictures are about the most indestructible things in the world.
[Illustration: J St. Loe Strachey. Ætat 32]
Through her father Mrs. Simpson also knew the great French statesmen of
her day, _i.e._, the middle period of the century, 1840 to 1870. He
was the friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, and of Thiers and Guizot, and
of most of the statesmen and men of letters who were their
contemporaries. The leading Italian statesmen, such as Cavour, were also
his friends. In fact, there were few people in Europe worth knowing whom
he did not know. What was more, he had a most astonishing personal gift--
the gift for photographing in words the talk of the statesmen whom he
encountered, not, remember, as a mere recorder but on terms of mutual
benefit. Though he liked to draw their opinions, in both senses, they
sought his wisdom and advice with equal assiduity. He was quite as much
Johnson as he was Boswell, or rather, almost as much Socrates as he was
Plato, for that is the best analogy.
_Conversations with the Statesmen of the Third Empire_, in two
volumes, crown octavo, sounds a pretty dull title, and yet anyone who
takes the trouble to read these conversations will find that they are
some of the most vivacious dialogues in all literature. Senior's system
of recording conversations throws a curious light, by the way, upon the
mechanism of the Platonic Dialogues. For some twenty-four centuries the
world has wondered how much of these Dramas of the Soul is to be
attributed to Socrates and how much to Plato, and the general verdict
has been that in most of them there is very much more Plato than
Socrates. In a word, they have been judged to be works of art in which
certain very general ideas and principles derived from Socrates are
expanded, put into shape, and often greatly altered by the alleged
recorder, or rather dramatic recounter.
Mrs. Simpson told me something of her father's method of putting down
his conversations which bears closely upon the value of this theory of
the Dialogues. But first I must note that Senior's reports of
conversations were famous for their extraordinary accuracy. Mrs. Simpson
well remembered an incident in proof of this statement. Her father had
written out a very important talk with Thiers in which by far the
greater part of the talk was sustained as usual by the great Frenchman.
When Senior had written it out, that is about a couple of days after the
conversation, he sent it, as was his habit, to Thiers for correction.
Thiers sent it back, saying that he could not find a word to alter,
adding that he was astonished to find that Senior had not only put down
his views and ideas, but had given his actual words. Yet, as a matter of
fact, Senior had done nothing of the kind. He had not even tried to do
so. What he had aimed at was something very different. His aim was to
give the spirit of the conversation, to produce the extreme
characteristic impression made on his mind by the talk of his
interlocutor, not the words themselves.
To show in a still more convincing way that I am making no exaggerated
deduction from my premises, I may call the further testimony given me
directly by Senior's daughter. It is this testimony which convinces me
that in the Platonic dialogues there is less Plato and more Socrates
than is generally imagined. Mrs. Simpson, or Miss Senior, as she then
was, once said to her father that she would like to listen to one of his
conversations and try to see whether she could not write it down as he
did. Her father, delighted that she should make the experiment,
explained to her the art as he practised it and gave her the following
directions.
To begin with, you must never try to remember the actual words that you
hear Thiers, or Guizot, or Lord Aberdeen, or Mr. Bright, or whoever else
it may be, use. If you begin to rack your brains and your memory you
will spoil the whole thing. You must simply sit down and write the
conversation out as you, knowing their views, think they must have
spoken or ought to have spoken. Then you will get the right result. If
you consciously rely on your memory, your report will lose all life and
interest.
While the conversation was going on Senior attended very accurately to
the ideas expressed and got a thorough understanding of them. When he
took up his pen he put himself in the position of a dramatist and wrote
what he felt sure his interlocutor would have said on the particular
theme. He put himself, that is, in his interlocutor's place. The
thoughts got clothed with the right words, though, no doubt, under great
compression.
That is interesting and curious, not solely from the point of view of
Plato, but of a great many of the speeches in classical history. People
have often wondered whether the men who speak so wisely and so well in
Thucydides or Tacitus really talked like that. Judging from Senior's
case, they very probably did. Thucydides, indeed, when describing his
method, uses expressions by no means at variance with the Senior system
of reporting, the system which, though aiming only at the spirit, often,
if we are to believe Thiers, hits the words also. It is quite possible
then that the British chieftain really made the speech recorded as his
in Tacitus, the speech which contains what is perhaps the greatest of
all political epigrams, "I know these Romans. They are the people who
make a desert and call it Peace."
There is another point in regard to the secret of Senior's power of
recording conversations which is worth noting by modern psychologists. I
cannot help thinking that what Senior did, unconsciously of course, was
to trust to his subconsciousness. That amiable and highly
impressionable, if dumb, spirit which sits within us all, got busy when
Thiers or Guizot was talking. The difficulty was to get out of him what
he had heard, and had at once transferred to the files in the Memory
cupboard. Senior, without knowing it, had, I doubt not, some little
trick which enabled him to get easily _en rapport_ with his
subconsciousness, and so tap the rich and recently stored vintage. His
writing was probably half automatic. It certainly was vivid and dramatic
in a high degree.
If anyone wants proof of my eulogy of Nassau-Senior's powers as a
conversationalist, let him go to the London Library and get down
Senior's works. Perhaps the best volume to begin with is
_Conversations and Journals in Egypt_--a book which Lord Cromer
used to declare was the best thing ever written about Egypt. I remember
also Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff saying that one of the conversations
with Hekekyan Bey, describing how he--the Bey--on a certain occasion saw
Mehemet sitting alone in his Palace by the Sea, deserted by all his
followers, was as poignant as anything in Tacitus. It will be remembered
that in 1840 we sent a fleet to Egypt under Sir Charles Napier, to
enforce our Syrian policy. The private instructions given by Lord
Palmerston to his admiral were as pointed as they were concise: "Tell
Mehemet Ali that if he does not change his policy and do what I wish, I
will chuck him into the Nile." In due course our fleet appeared at
Alexandria. The Pasha was at first recalcitrant, but when our ships took
up position opposite the town and palace and cleared for action he gave
way and agreed to the British terms. During the crisis and when it
looked as if the old tyrant was either bent upon political and personal
suicide, or else had lost all sense of proportion, the courtiers and the
people of Alexandria generally fled from their doomed Lord and Master.
As if by magic his palace was utterly deserted. No Monarch falls so
utterly as an Oriental Despot. Hekekyan Bey described the scene of which
he was a witness in words which could hardly be bettered:
I was then the engineer charged with the defences of the coast. We were
expecting an attack from Sir Charles Napier, and I had been to Rosetta
to inspect the batteries. It was on a tempestuous night that I returned
to Alexandria, and went to the palace on the shore of the former Island
of Pharos, to make my report to Mehemet Ali.
The halls and passages, which I used to find full of Mamelukes and
officers strutting about in the fullness of their contempt for a
Christian, were empty. Without encountering a single attendant, I
reached his room overlooking the sea; it was dimly lighted by a few
candles of bad Egyptian wax, with enormous untrimmed wicks. Here, at the
end of his divan, I found him rolled up in a sort of ball,--solitary,
motionless, apparently absorbed in thought. The waves were breaking
heavily on the mole, and I expected every instant the casements to be
blown in. The roar of wind and sea was almost awful, but he did not seem
conscious of it.
I stood before him silent. Suddenly he said, as if speaking to himself,
"I think I can trust Ibrahim." Again he was silent for some time, and
then desired me to fetch Motus Bey, his admiral. I found him, and
brought him to the Viceroy. Neither of them spoke, until the Viceroy,
after looking at him steadily for some minutes, said to me, "He is
drunk; take him away." I did so, and so ended my visit without making
any report.
That heart-cry of the deserted tyrant, "_I think I can trust
Ibrahim_"--his own son, in all probability, though called his stepson
(Ibrahim's mother was a widow)--is comparable to the cry of Augustus:
"_Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!_"
Wonderfully Tacitean is a later comment of the Pasha--an Armenian by
birth. He told Senior that the Pasha could never forget or forgive that
he had seen his master in the day of his humiliation. So intolerable was
the thought that Mehemet Ali made two secret attempts to kill his
faithful servant. "He wished me to die, but he did not wish to be
suspected of having killed me." In my recollections of Lord Cromer, in
an earlier chapter, I have told a story of one of Mehemet Ali's removals
of inconvenient servants which is well worth recalling in this context.
If I say much more about Mr. Nassau-Senior I shall fill a book. I admit
that it would be a very curious and attractive work, for he was in the
truest sense a man of note, but I cannot put a book inside a book.
Therefore this must be, not merely one of my unwritten chapters, but one
of my unwritten books.
In the same way, I cannot dwell upon dozens of delightful men and women
with whom I became acquainted through my wife and her people, and who
remained fast and good friends, though, alas! many of them have long
since joined the majority,--for example, Lecky, Leslie Stephen, and Mr.
Justice Stephen, and Mr. Henry Reeve of the _Edinburgh_. The last-
named, very soon after our acquaintanceship, invited me to write for
him, and thus I was able to add the _Edinburgh_ as well as the
_Quarterly_ to the trophies of my pen. My wife and I used often to
dine at his house--always a place of good company even if the aura was
markedly Victorian. Reeve was full of stories of how Wordsworth used to
stop with him when he came up to London in his later years. He lent his
Court suit to Wordsworth in order that the Poet-Laureate should present
himself at a Levee in proper form. But again these remembrances must be
repressed for reasons of space.
Just as I have taken the Arthur Russell group as a type of the people
with whom my marriage made me friends, so I shall take as typical two
men of high distinction who were friends of my mother-in-law, and whom I
saw either at her house or at houses of friends to whom we were bidden
through the kindly, old-fashioned institution of wedding-parties. These
were Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning. I met Matthew Arnold at a
dinner at Mrs. Simpson's, given largely, I think, because I expressed my
desire to see a man for whose poetry and prose I had come to have an
intense admiration. When quite young I was a little inclined to turn up
my nose at Matthew Arnold's verse, though I admit I had a good deal of
it by heart. By the time, however, that I had got to my twenty-seventh
year, I bent my knee in reverent adoration at the shrine, and realised
what the two _Obermann_ poems and _The Grande Chartreuse_ stanzas
meant, not only to the world but to me.
I was captivated in advance by Matthew Arnold's literary charm. I
delighted also in the stories about him of which London and Oxford were
full. I had only to watch him and listen to his talk across the dinner-
table to realise the truth of his own witty self-criticism. When he
married, he is said to have described his wife thus: "Ah! you must see
my Fanny. You are sure to like her. She has all my graces and none of my
airs." The said airs and graces were, of course, only a gentle and
pleasant pose. They winged with humour Matthew Arnold's essential, I had
almost said sublime, seriousness. Truly he was like one of the men for
whom he longed:
Who without sadness shall be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Though, of course, Socrates had more fire, more of the demon in him, one
can well believe that at times, and when his circumambient irony was at
its gentlest, it must have been like that of Matthew Arnold. Matthew
Arnold has been called over fastidious, but I do not think that is fair.
Fastidious he no doubt was. Also he thought it his duty to rub in our
national want of fastidiousness, and our proneness to mistake nickel for
silver. It must not be supposed, however, that Matthew Arnold could not
endure to look upon the world as it is because of the high standard he
had set up in Literature and in the Arts. In reality his was a wise and
comprehensive view. He could enjoy men and things in practice even when
he disapproved of them in theory. His inimitably delicate distinctions
were drawn quite as much in favour of the weak as in support of the
strong. Take, for example, his famous _mot_, "I would not say he
was not a gentleman, but if you said so, I should understand what you
meant." For example, Matthew Arnold would not have said that Shelley was
not a poet. If, however, you had said so, he would have _very
nearly_ agreed with you, and would have given all sorts of reasons to
support your view. Yet, in all probability, he would at the same time
have urged you not to forget that all the same he had a claim to a good
place, if not a front place, in the glorious choir of Apollo.
I cannot remember any particular thing said on that occasion by Matthew
Arnold, but I do remember very well how pleased and touched I was when
after dinner he crossed over from his side of the table, and sitting
down by me, began talking about the members of his family, whom he
seemed to know that I knew. I knew Mrs. Ward; I knew his niece, Miss
Arnold, Mrs. Ward's sister, soon to become Mrs. Leonard Huxley, and,
last but not least, I was on the closest terms of intimacy with that
most admirable of journalists, Willie Arnold of the _Manchester
Guardian_. Probably because I was acting as a sort of aide-de-camp
and son of the house to my father-in-law, Mr. Simpson, I did not get a
connected literary talk. Besides, I felt sure that from his friendliness
I should later have plenty of opportunities to ask a hundred things of
his spiritual home. Little did I know how soon he was to be cut off.
These were the years which saw the deaths of Barnes, Browning, Tennyson,
and Matthew Arnold--years of which one was tempted to say with
Wordsworth:
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing
hand, How fast has brother followed brother From sunshine to the sunless
land.
Browning was the other poet for whom I felt a very strong admiration and
whom I had often wanted to meet. Though a friend of the Simpsons, and a
visitor and diner at their house, I met him not at 14 Cornwall Gardens
but at a very small dinner-party in the house of a common friend. After
dinner Browning, Sir Sidney Colvin, another man, and I were left
drinking our coffee and our port and smoking our cigarettes. Browning
was, I believe, often inclined to talk like a man of the world about
people or stocks and shares rather than about literature. But I was
determined to do what I could to prevent him pushing that foible too
far. Therefore I did my very best to lead the conversation on to better
pastures. I had always loved Landor, and something or other gave me an
opportunity to ask a question about him. Mr. Browning, I felt sure, must
have known him in his last years at Florence.
I was happy in my venture and struck a vein of reminiscence of a very
poignant kind. Browning told us that he did not know Landor very well,
but that he saw him in the last years of his life under circumstances of
a terribly pathetic kind. Landor played almost exactly the part of King
Lear--though from a different reason--and got almost exactly King Lear's
reward. Landor, it will be remembered, was originally a rich man. It
will also be remembered that he was possessed of a very arbitrary and
turbulent nature and quarrelled with many members of his family, and
especially with his own children. However, they lived in a villa at
Fiesole for some time, in a kind of turbulent domesticity. Landor, on
leaving England, had unwisely given away his property to his children,
thinking that he could rely upon them to be kind to him. But he had not
trained them in the ways of kindness. He had been hot, brutal, and
tyrannical to them when he had the power. When they got it they were
equally brutal to him. At last his daughter determined to bear the old
man's ill-temper--ill-temper, apparently, approaching to madness--no
longer. He was told by Miss Landor that if he could not control himself
better she would not tolerate him any longer in the villa, and would, in
fact, turn him out of doors. He disobeyed her injunctions, or, as she
probably put it, failed to keep his promise of better behaviour, and
then, incredible as it sounds from anyone who had ever read _Lear_,
she actually barred the doors of what had once been his home against the
unhappy old man and drove him out to wander whither he could. If she did
not physically put him out of doors, she put humiliations so unendurable
upon him that, like Lear, he left the house in an agony of broken-
heartedness and despair. The once-proud poet had very few friends in
Florence, little or no money, and literally nowhere to go. The result
was that he wandered, half-distracted, like Lear, bewailing the wound at
his heart which a daughter's hand had given. Somehow, like an old,
stray, and starving dog, he wandered to the Brownings' house. There,
needless to say, he found rest for the body and comfort for the soul.
Mrs. Browning did everything she could for Landor--took him in, fed
him, put him to bed, and strove to quiet and soften his fierce and
pitiful and outraged heart. Browning went on to tell how as soon as the
old man was a little composed, he drove up to Fiesole to see Miss
Landor--thinking that perhaps, after all, it was only a family quarrel
which could be tactfully adjusted. That supposition proved entirely
mistaken.
I found [said Browning] an almost exact reincarnation of the daughters
of Lear in Miss Landor. She was perfectly hard and perfectly cold. She
told me of her father's troublesome ways, nay, misdeeds, of how she had
borne them for a long time, of how he had promised better behaviour, and
of how he had broken his word again and again. At last the limit had
been passed. She could endure him in her house no longer. I argued with
her [he went on] as well as I could, urged that she evidently did not
realise her father's mental condition, and pointed out that whatever his
past faults he was now lying in my house a dying man, and dying of a
broken heart. I hoped and believed that my description of his anguish
and his distraction would melt her.
Then came the most terrible part of the story. Miss Landor must, I
suppose, have accompanied Browning through the garden to the gate of the
villa, and there spoke her final words. Browning said something about
the remorse which she would inevitably feel. Her father had, no doubt,
given her great provocation, but if the end came before she had forgiven
him and helped him, she would never be able to forgive herself. His
words were of no avail. She had Goneril's heart. Pointing to a ditch at
the side of the road, she answered, "I tell you, Mr. Browning, that if
my father lay dying in that ditch, I would not lift a finger to save
him."
And so Browning went back to Casa Guido. He had looked into the awful
depths which Shakespeare had explored--an agony of the mind beyond
words, and beyond solution. The sense of pity and terror had been raised
for which even the poet's art could find no purgation.
What he said to the unhappy old man when he returned to Florence he did
not tell us. Mercifully, Landor's memory was failing, and so one may
hope that the waters of the Lethe brought him like Lear their blessed
relief.
Strangely enough, no poet ever sang their healing virtues more
poignantly than did Landor. When Agamemnon, in Landor's poem, red from
Clytemnestra's axe, reaches the Shades, the Hours bring him their golden
goblet. He drinks and forgets. He is no more maddened by the thought
that his daughter will learn his fate. Till then he had felt:
the first woman coming from Mycenae
Will pine to pour the poison in her ear.
I have set down, I believe correctly, what I heard Browning tell, but I
am bound to add that it does not quite correspond with the facts given
in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. Leslie Stephen in the
life of Landor mentions the quarrel and the kind intervention of the
Brownings, but does not make the incident nearly so tragic. Very
probably indignation made Browning emphasise the bad side of the story.
Also he was telling of something which had taken place thirty years
before. Finally, it is thirty-five years since I heard the conversation
here recorded and indignation has also, no doubt, played its part in
deepening the colours of my narration. But, though for these reasons I
do not suggest that the details I have given are of biographical
importance, I feel absolutely certain on two essential points: (1)
Browning unquestionably compared the scene he witnessed to _Lear_
and compared it in the most striking and poignant way. (2) The words put
into the mouth of Miss Landor are not any invention or addition of mine.
They made a profound impression upon me and I am sure they are the
actual words I heard Browning use. He spoke them with passion and
dramatic intent, and they still ring in my ears. My memory for many
things is as treacherous as that of most people, but when a certain
degree of dramatic intensity is reached the record on the tablets of my
mind is almost always correct and remains unchanged.
Before I leave the subject of my wife's family and friends and of the
warm-hearted kindness with which they received me, I ought to say
something about my father-in-law, Mr. Simpson. Though he had not his
wife's charm of manner and delight in all the amenities of life and of
social intercourse on its best side, he was to me a very attractive man,
as well as one of very great ability. Through his shyness he made all
but his intimates regard him as dull. There was in truth no dullness
about him. His mind was one of great acuteness within its own very
special limits. Either by nature or training, I can hardly tell which,
he was exactly fitted to be what he was, that is, first a Second
Wrangler at Cambridge, then a Conveyancer, and Standing Counsel to the
Post Office. Though he never took silk, he was in the most exact sense a
counsel learned in the law, and received the singular honour of being
made a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, although he was not a Queen's Counsel.
His special gift in the study and practice of the law was his skilful
draftsmanship whether in wills, conveyances, or clauses in Acts of
Parliament. His vast knowledge and his judgment as to what was the
proper interpretation of the Statutes, of the rules of Equity, of the
principles of the Common Law, and of the practice of the Courts, was
unrivalled.
Mr. Simpson was, in private life, one of the most honourable and high-
minded men that I have ever known. Most honourable men are content to be
careful of other people's rights and conscious of their own duties in
big things, but do not bother themselves to ask whether they have done
exactly right in little things. Mr. Simpson was as particular in the
minutiae of conduct as he was in great affairs. Take, for example, the
way in which he regarded the duty of silence in regard to any knowledge
of clients' private affairs which he had derived in the course of his
professional work. He never yielded to the temptation to gossip, even
about cases which were thirty or forty years old, cases which it might
have been argued had become historical. This care extended not only to
his own cases, but to matters which he had heard discussed in his
chambers in Lincoln's Inn or in those of his brother barristers.
You could not move him by saying that everybody was dead in the case
concerned, or that it would be to the credit of particular people to
tell what really happened and what were the true causes and motives of
the action. Nothing of this kind would affect him. He gave for his
silence reasons similar to those which Dr. Lushington gave when, on his
death-bed as a very old man, his family asked him to leave for
historical purposes a record of the truth about Byron's quarrel with his
wife. Dr. Lushington replied that even if he could do so without a
breach of faith with any living person, he would not. He had a higher
duty, and that was to help men and women to feel that they could
unburden themselves fully to their professional advisers, and that there
was no risk of those advisers in the future constituting themselves the
judges of whether this or that thing should become known to the world at
large.
What the client wants is the seal of the confessional. If he cannot have
that, he will often refuse to speak the whole truth. But this may mean
not only personal injury to those who would speak out if they could feel
sure of secrecy, but might inflict injury on others, and indeed on the
community as a whole. There is, I feel, no rational denial of this point
of view. At any rate, this was the principle which Mr. Simpson carried
out in the most meticulous way. He would only talk about the law in the
abstract or upon points made in open court. He would not even go so far
as to say, "I drew up that marriage settlement, or made that will, or
advised this or that man to take action."
He carried his reticence beyond even professional knowledge. For
example, he regarded what was said in a club smoking-room as said under
the seal of secrecy, and nothing would induce him to repeat what he had
heard. Strangely enough, he was a member of the Garrick Club, and I
remember him once mentioning that Thackeray used to hold forth in the
smoking-room to all present. Naturally I thought that he would be
willing to describe some of these talks, for they had obviously made a
great impression on him. He, however, was adamant in this matter. When
people talked in club-rooms, he argued, they ought to have the feeling
that it was like talking in their own house and to their own family. For
him Clubs were "tiled" houses.
I think, myself, that he went too far here; but certainly he was erring
on the right side. At the present moment the habit of certain lawyers,
doctors, and businessmen, to discuss the private affairs of their
clients and customers in public is much too common. No doubt most of
them are careful to use a good deal of camouflage and to tell their
stories as "A" "B" cases, without mentioning names. But that is not
always successful. Chance and the impishness of coincidence will very
often enable one to discover the most carefully camouflaged secret. I
remember, as a young man, coming across an instance of this kind which
very much struck me. It happened that the barrister in whose chambers I
was a pupil said, very properly, to me on the first day that he supposed
I understood that whatever I saw in papers in chambers must be regarded
as strictly confidential. It might, he said, happen that I should see
things of a highly confidential nature about someone whom I knew in
Society; and he went on to tell a story of how, when he was young, two
young barristers or students came across a set of papers in which two
young ladies, sisters, who happened to be acquaintances of these young
men, were mentioned as having a reversionary interest in a very large
sum of money with only one old life between it and them. Though
apparently only daughters of a struggling professional man, they would
soon, it appeared, be great heiresses. The result was two proposals and
two marriages! Whether they lived happily ever afterwards is not stated,
but they lived, at any rate, "wealthily."
I did not condemn the principle as unsportsmanlike but I remember
thinking that there must be a million chances against a barrister ever
seeing papers relating to someone he knows. Yet, within two or three
days, I was told to help in drafting a marriage settlement which dealt
with people at whose house I was going to dance on the very night in
question. To my surprise I found that my host and hostess were very rich
people. Though I lived for nearly two years in Mr. Simpson's house, and
for the next fourteen years, that is, till his death, I saw him
constantly, I neither exchanged a bitter word with him, nor felt the
slightest indignation or annoyance at anything he did or said. He was at
heart one of the kindliest as well as one of the shyest and apparently
most austere of men. Mathematics and law may have dried up his
intellect, but they never dried up his heart.
Though he was a man of fine intellect, and had a great and deep
knowledge of many subjects, I think I never saw a man who was so
absolutely devoid of any interest in poetry or _Belles-Lettres_. I
believe indeed that he was quite without any understanding of what
poetry meant. If I had been told that he was the Wrangler who said that
he could not see "what _Paradise Lost_ proved," I should not have
been the least surprised. And yet the style of his writing was often
remarkable for its perfect clarity and perfect avoidance of anything in
the shape of ambiguity. He could say what he wanted to say in the fewest
number of words and in a way in which the most ingenious person could
not twist into meaning something which they were not intended to mean.
He was indeed a super-draftsman. But that is a gift which every man of
letters who is worthy of his salt ought to salute with reverence.
My treatment of many things in this book has been inadequate owing to
want of space, but in no case has it been so inadequate as that of
London of the 'nineties. But my complaint here is, of course, a
complaint common to every biography.
Biographers, I am told, always write in this strain. They begin by
declaring that they have nothing to say and end by wailing over the
insufficiency of the space allowed them.
CHAPTER XX
THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM
When I became not only sole Proprietor of _The Spectator_ but also
Editor-in-Chief, Chief Leader-writer, and Chief Reviewer, it was natural
that I should confront myself with the problem of the position and use
of the journalist--in a word, that I should ask myself what I was doing.
Should I accept and be content with the ordinary outlook of the
journalist on his profession, or should I in any particular strike out a
new line, or an extension of an old one for myself?
At that time, i.e. in 1898, the air was full of talk as to the functions
and duties of the journalist, for journalism was emerging from its
period of veiled power and was beginning to fill a much larger space in
the public mind. But in my case this was not the whole of the
opportunity. By a singular set of circumstances I found myself in the
unique position just described. Townsend and Hutton, it is true, were
joint Editors and joint Proprietors; but the sense of responsibility of
each to the other was a strong check. I, however, as sole Proprietor and
sole Editor, could do exactly what I liked. I could decide, without
reference to anyone else, the policy to be adopted. Further, as Chief
Leader-writer, I was the man who had to carry out the policy adopted. I
had, that is, the function of making the decisions immediately
operative. This is more important in fact than it is in theory. In
theory an Editor's word--subject to the Proprietor's veto--is final. He
gives his instructions to the leader-writer, and the leader-writer,
presuming that he is not a fool or a headstrong egoist or a man
determined to flout his Editor's wishes, obeys them. That is the theory.
But there are several mitigating circumstances. In the first place, it
is often difficult for an Editor to make his policy quite clear to his
staff. Next, the leader-writer, no matter how strong his intention to
obey his instructions and to enter into the spirit of his chief, may
fail to do so, from want of that complete clarity of mind that comes
only with personal conviction. If not his own view, his own
understanding of the facts is apt to get in the way and prevent him
carrying out his duties exactly as his chief meant him to perform them,
and exactly as he himself wishes to perform them.
Again, by a sort of law of reversed effort, the leader-writer may be too
anxious to carry out his chief's wishes and so may distort the Editor's
view. There is yet another way in which a loss of power may occur. If
the Editor had himself been writing, he would have seen as he wrote that
this or that particular line of policy that he had adopted was not
tenable, and therefore he would have altered that line. The
conscientious leader-writer may, however, resist this conversion by
circumstantial argument. He may feel:
This seems to me to be all wrong, but I have got to make the
best of it. Otherwise I shall be taking the responsibility,
which I do not want to take, of altering my Chief's instructions.
He said, "Defend the Government's action," so
defend it I must.
But the Editor himself may be in a similar position. If he has an active
Proprietor who gives regular and specific instructions, he is not really
the Editor but only the Proprietor's mouthpiece. In that case, he, too,
can, as it were, avoid a great deal of the feeling of personal
responsibility. He may say,
I do not like this view. But, after all, it is the matter for the
Proprietor, and he may have good reasons for his decision.
Anyway, I cannot in a matter of this kind attempt to dictate
to him, because if a mistake is made, he will have to stand the
racket. After all, I may be wrong as to the policy we should
pursue, and if I am, then I shall be doing what I do not want to
do, that is, gravely injuring somebody else's property and
position. A man may make great sacrifices and run great risks
with his own property, but I don't want to be told later that I
was the man who insisted on taking his own line against the
opinion of his chief with the result that a fatal blow was given
to the position of the paper, I don't feel justified in risking
another man's property.
The Editor, in fact, is very much in the position of the leader-writer.
These things being so, I realised that the responsibility for whatever
was done in _The Spectator_ was going to be my responsibility in a
very special degree. I could not plead consideration for anyone else's
need if I had to defend _The Spectator's_ position. Therefore, I
must be not only specially careful as to what I did from day to day, but
I must think out for myself an answer to the journalistic interrogatory
"_Quo vadis_?" What is the journalist's function in the State, and
how am I to carry it out? The formula for the discharge of the
journalist's functions, which I ultimately came to consider to be true
in the abstract and capable of being translated into action, was,
curiously enough, the formula of a man whose judgment I profoundly
distrusted, whose work as a journalist I disliked, and who as a man was
to me exceedingly unsympathetic. It was that of Mr. Stead, the erratic
Editor first of the _Pall Mall_ and then of the _Review of
Reviews_. The journalist, he declared, was "the watch-dog of
society." Stead, though a man of honest intent and very great ability,
was also a man of many failings, many ineptitudes, many prejudices, and
many injustices--witness the attitude he adopted in his last years
towards Lord Cromer. Further, there was an element of commonness in his
mental attitude as in his style. But with all this, he had a very
considerable _flair_, not only in the matter of words, but in
ideas. Though the phrase was not used in his time, he was a pastmaster
in the art of making "slogans." This, of the watch-dogs in the case of
the Press, was one of his best. It exactly fitted the views which I was
gradually developing in regard to the journalist's functions. In the
course of my twelve years' apprenticeship at _The Spectator_,
_The Economist_, _The Standard,_ and the other journals for
which I wrote, I made it my business to study the work of my colleagues.
I soon saw that the men who did the best and most useful work were the
watch-dogs; the men who gave warnings. But I also very soon found out
that in practice the part is one which cannot be played if the performer
wants to have a pleasant time in the world, or to make himself generally
liked by his fellow-men. A watch-dog is never popular. How could he be?
People do not like to be disturbed, and to be warned generally means a
loud noise and often a shock to delicate nerves. Besides, it generally
ends in asking people not to do something they are strongly tempted to
do. The bark of the watch-dog is, in a rough-and-ready way, much too
much like the voice of conscience to be agreeable to the natural man.
Though sometime after he may be very grateful to the watch-dog for his
bark, when he first hears it he is inclined to say:
Oh! drat that dog. I wish he'd shut up. There he is barking
away, and it is probably only the moon, or some harmless
tramp, or a footstep a mile away down the road, for the brute's
power of hearing is phenomenal. Yet if he goes on like that I
must pay some attention, or else there'll be an awful row with
the Boss to-morrow morning if anything was stolen or any
damage done. The creature's spoilt my night, anyway; I must
get up and see what's going on.
The result is that the tired householder paddles about the house in
carpet slippers, grumbling about this folly of thinking that anyone
could be so unjust or unfair as to attack a well-meaning man like him.
It would be an infamy to think of any such scheme. "I want my neighbours
to trust me, and they will never do that unless I trust them. So I will
have another glass of port and get to bed, and, if that infernal dog
will allow me, go to sleep."
"All's Well" is always a more popular motto for life than "Beware!" It
is not only the householder who dislikes the watch-dog. There are people
who have more sinister motives than a love of peace for disliking the
watch-dog. Those who like to have a night out occasionally without
comment from the Master; and those who think it only fair that certain
perquisites should be smuggled out of the house by the charwoman and
others without any fuss, "cannot abide" the dog and its horrid way of
barking at a shawl thrown over a large plaited basket.
Nobody [they argue] wants to see the master robbed, but
there is a great difference between robbery and having things
a little easy now and then, and no tiresome questions asked.
If we are all to be deprived of our night's rest by that dog,
there will be no end of trouble, and if it goes on much further
we shall have to see about getting rid of him, or else changing
him for a dog that is more reasonable.
But that is not the whole of the trouble. Not only is the watch-dog
generally disliked, but he is in danger of being turned from what he
ought to be, into a gruff old grumbler. You cannot go on perpetually
barking out warnings without getting a hoarse note into your voice, and
that makes you compare very ill with the parlour dog and his charming
manners, or with the sporting dogs who go out and attend their masters
at their pleasures. The working dogs, too, such as those of the
shepherd, are far more popular and far more picturesque.
Finally, the watch-dog is often misunderstood because he has got a very
narrow gamut of notes. His bark is taken as an angry warning, when all
he means to say is: "This is a new man and a new policy, and you had
better look into it and see whether it is all right. I should not be
doing my duty if I did not warn you to look out." Then if the new-comer
turns out to be a harmless or useful person, the watch-dog is blamed
because he did not recognise merit on the instant.
But if acting as watch-dog is a disagreeable job, as it most undoubtedly
is, it has its compensations. Journalism of which the mainspring is the
gaining of pleasure may easily degenerate into something akin to the
comic actor's function. Stevenson in a famous passage compared the
writers of _belles-lettres_ to "_filles de joie._" That was
not, I think, appropriate to the artists in words, but at any rate it is
a condition into which the journalist who knows nothing of the watch-
dog's duties can easily descend. Our danger is to fall into a kind of
intellectual prostitution, and from this the duty of barking keeps us
free.
"But," it may be argued in reply, "why need you bark in such a loud and
raucous way? Why need you be so bitter?" Here comes a close and
interesting issue. How is it possible to give a warning in earnest
without exposing one's self to the accusation of being bitter? I have
again and again tried, as a journalist, to consider this question, for
it has often been my lot to be accused of "intense personal bitterness."
Yet in reality I have felt no such feeling. What people have called
bitterness has to me seemed only barking sufficiently loud to force
attention. I have often, indeed, had a great deal of admiration and
sympathy for the men for whom I have been supposed to entertain angry
feelings. I have longed to say nice things about them, but that, of
course, is impossible when you are on a warning campaign. The journalist
that does that is lost. At once the friends of the person against whom
the warning is issued complain of your lack of character, of your want
of stability, of your habit of turning round and facing the other way.
You cannot be a watch-dog only at stated hours, and on off days purr
like the family cat.
I will take a specific illustration of what I mean by the watch-dog
function in journalism. Throughout my life I have been a strong
democratic Imperialist. To me the alliance of free self-governing
Dominions, which constitute the British Empire, has a sacred character.
It has rendered great help to the cause of peace, civilisation, and
security, and it will render still more. I feel, further, that
throughout Africa, as throughout India, we have done an incomparable
service to humanity by our maintenance of just and stable government.
Our record on the hideous crime of slavery, even if it stood alone,
would be a justification for the British Empire. But it does not stand
alone; there are hundreds of other grounds for saying that, if the
British Empire had not existed, it would have had to be invented in the
interests of mankind. But though I was always so ardent a supporter of
the British Empire and of the Imperial spirit, I was not one of those
people who thought that the mere word "Imperialism" would cover a
multitude of misdeeds.
To come to close quarters with my illustration, I thought that the
watch-dog had to do a good deal of barking in the case of Mr. Rhodes's
practical methods of expanding the British Empire. They seemed to me so
dangerous and so little consistent with a high sense of national honour
and good faith that I felt it was part of my job to protest against them
with all my strength. We were told, for example, by his friends, that
Mr. Rhodes believed in the policy of the open cheque-book. If you wanted
a thing, you must pay for it, and he did. He went further than that: his
favourite maxim was said to be, "I never yet saw an opposition that I
could not buy or break." It appeared to me that here was an extremely
dangerous man, and one against whom the public ought to be warned, and
as loudly as possible.
What first set me on his track was Rhodes's gift of £10,000 to Mr.
Parnell for the funds of the Irish Nationalists. The gift was made about
the time when Mr. Rhodes wished to get his Charter through the House of
Commons. Of course, I know that Mr. Rhodes was accustomed to say that
the gift and the Charter had nothing to do with each other, and even
that the dates would not fit. It was, he declared, an unworthy suspicion
to suggest that it had ever crossed his mind that Parnellite criticism,
then very loud in the House, could be lulled by a good subscription.
Besides, he was and always had been a whole-hearted Home Ruler. Mr.
Rhodes, who bought policies as other men buy pictures, made it a
condition, of course, that the Nationalists should assure him that they
had no intention of leaving the Empire!
My view of the facts was different, and I believe it was the true view.
Mr. Rhodes wanted the Charter badly, and he did not much mind how he got
it. He did not, of course, want the Charter in order to make himself
rich. He wanted to extend the Empire in South Africa on particular
lines, and these included a Chartered Province under his personal
guidance. To accomplish this he was perfectly willing to take the help
of bitter enemies of the Empire and of England, like Mr. Parnell; men
who wanted to give our Empire the blow at the heart. Worse than that, he
was willing to give them the pecuniary help they needed in their effort
to destroy England, and to risk the consequences. That was surely a case
for the watch-dog. "Look at what the man in the fur-lined Imperial cloak
has got under it."
To my mind what was even worse than the Parnellite subscription was the
way in which the Chartered Company was run and the way in which its
shares at par were showered on "useful" politicians at home and in South
Africa. The Liberal party at Westminster professed to be anti-
Imperialist and pro-Boer. Yet I noted to my disgust that Mr. Rhodes not
only called himself a Liberal, but that quite a number of "earnest
Liberals" were commercially interested in the Charter.
In this context I may recall a phrase used by a witness before a
Parliamentary Committee at Capetown, which made inquiries as to the
distribution of "shares at par" when the selling price of Chartered
stock was very high. The witness was asked on what system certain
authorised but unallotted shares were distributed at par. They were, he
stated, given to journalists and other persons "_who had to be
satisfied on this Charter_." I am not by nature a suspicious person,
but, rightly or wrongly, that appeared to me to be a short cut to
ruining the Empire. Though personally I knew nothing about Rhodes, and
was inclined to like an adventurous, pushful spirit, it was clear to me
that, holding the views I did as to the functions of the journalist, I
had no choice but to bark my loudest. My Imperialist friends were for
the most part horribly shocked at what they called my gross and unjust
personal prejudices against a great man. Some of them, indeed, asked me
how I could reconcile my alleged Unionist and anti-separatist views with
opposition to the great Empire-builder. When I told them that it was
just because I was an Imperialist, and did not want to see the Empire
destroyed, that I opposed Rhodes, pointed out to them that he was an
arch corrupter, and insisted that corruption destroyed, not made,
Empires, I was told that I did not know what I was talking about. I was
a foolish idealist who did not understand practical politics. Such self-
righteous subtleties must be ignored in the conduct of great affairs.
This talk, instead of putting me off, made me feel it was absolutely
necessary, however disagreeable, to pursue my policy. In this view I
soon had the good fortune to obtain the support and encouragement of
Lord Cromer. Here, by the admission of all men, was the greatest of
living Imperialists. Yet I found that he was in full sympathy with my
determination to let the British public know what was going on.
As I have said, I felt very deeply about the gift to the Nationalists.
Later, I heard that Mr. Rhodes had not only bought off, or tried to buy
off, Irish opposition, but that he had actually offered and given a
considerable sum of money to the funds of the Liberal Party in order to
get them to change their policy in regard to Egypt. The great part of
the Liberal leaders and the party generally considered that we were
pledged to leave Egypt. This did not suit Mr. Rhodes, with his curious
shilling-Atlas and round-ruler point of view about a Cape to Cairo
Railway. What would happen if, when the railway was completed to the
Egyptian frontier, the platelayers found either a hostile Egypt or a
foreign power in possession, and determined to prevent a junction of the
rails? Mr. Rhodes regarded such a possibility as intolerable, and, after
his manner, determined to buy out the opposition to his great hobby.
Accordingly, he approached Mr. Schnadhorst, the Boss of the Liberal
Party, and told him that he, Rhodes, was a good sound Liberal, and
wanted to give £10,000 to the Liberal funds, which were then much
depleted--owing to the secession several years previously of Lord
Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. But the gift was conditional. Mr. Rhodes
did not see his way to present the money unless he could have an
assurance from Mr. Gladstone himself that the Liberal party would not,
if they came into power, evacuate Egypt. In a word, he proposed to buy a
non-evacuation policy, and offered a good price for it. Mr. Schnadhorst
wanted £10,000 for his party, and wanted it badly. Accordingly he wrote
a letter to Mr. Rhodes, assuring him that the party would not evacuate
Egypt. The letter would not do for Mr. Rhodes. He wanted a categorical
pledge from Mr. Gladstone. This he only obtained indirectly, and
ultimately I believe that only about £5,000 was paid.
But though for several years I heard rumours of a large subscription by
Mr. Rhodes to the Liberal funds, they were vague. Chance, however,
enabled me to prove what I felt was probably the truth. It happened that
Mr. Boyd, one of Mr. Rhodes's private secretaries, sent a letter to
_The Spectator_ about Rhodesia, in which he made a clear allusion
to the subscription to the Liberal funds. I at once noted this admission
and insisted that the matter should now be cleared up. The Liberal
leaders ought, I declared, to say frankly whether any subscription had
ever been accepted from Mr. Rhodes.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as leader of the Liberal Party, wrote an
indignant letter to _The Spectator_, declaring that the statement
was a lie. He added that he was authorised by Sir William Harcourt to
say that he joined in the denial and so in the accusation of falsehood
against Mr. Rhodes's secretary. I then called on Mr. Rhodes in justice
to himself to make good, if he could, the allegations of his private
secretary.
Then the whole strange story came out. Mr. Rhodes wrote to say that the
correspondence with Mr. Schnadhorst was at the Cape, but that he had
cabled for it, and that when it came he would send it to _The
Spectator_ and let the British people judge whether the story was or
was not a lie. When the letters arrived they showed that Mr. Rhodes had
actually proposed to buy the policy he wanted, as he might have bought a
shirt or a suit-case, and that the famous Liberal Manager was quite
willing to do business--especially as it was pretty obvious that the
evacuation of Egypt was no longer popular with a considerable section of
Liberals.
I was, naturally, well satisfied with the result of the warnings which I
had given in regard to Mr. Rhodes. I had brought about an exposure of
his methods, and had also exposed the carelessness and recklessness
which allowed the agents of the Liberal Party to make a secret deal with
a man like Mr. Rhodes, and a deal in which the consideration was a large
sum of money. And all the time a number of the conventional Liberals
were denouncing Mr. Rhodes for his shoddy Imperialism! The attitude of
the public at large in regard to my action was curious. The politicians
on my own side evidently thought that I had pushed things too far, and
had been indiscreet. Some of them naively asked, in effect, where should
I be if something unpleasant were to come out about the past of my own
leaders. When I suggested that I should have to do exactly what I had
done in the case of the Liberals, they were very much shocked at my
"disloyalty to my party."
The Liberals, on the other hand, though the vast majority of them,
leaders and led, had known nothing whatever of the transaction, and were
in truth greatly ashamed of it, instead of being angry with their chief
Party Manager, were violently angry with me. They declared that I was
showing a most vindictive spirit towards a great and good man like Mr.
Gladstone. I had "entered into a conspiracy with Mr. Rhodes in regard to
the publication of a private correspondence." When I pointed out that,
as a matter of fact, I disliked Mr. Rhodes's methods quite as much as
they did, and held that it was as bad to buy a policy as to sell one,
they inconsequently murmured that I had dealt a deadly blow against the
sanctity of public life by helping Rhodes to break faith, and that my
conduct was unforgivable.
I may end my story by a description of an interview which I had in
regard to this matter with Mr. Rhodes at his hotel in Mayfair. It was
the only occasion on which I saw or spoke to him. His private secretary,
Mr. Boyd, came to me and said that Mr. Rhodes was very anxious to hand
over to me in person the letters between himself and the Liberal
Manager. Would I therefore mind going to see Mr. Rhodes, and letting him
tell me the whole story in his own words? I did not feel in a
particularly kindly frame of mind towards Mr. Rhodes, and I knew and
thoroughly disliked his ways with the Press. Further, I did not want to
run any risk of Mr. Rhodes hinting later that I had tried to blackmail
him, or that he had made a suggestion as to interesting me later in the
Chartered Company which had been apparently welcomed by me, and so on
and so on. I therefore expressed my opinion that there was no need
whatever for a personal interview. Mr. Boyd thereupon made a strong plea
_ad misericordiam_. Mr. Rhodes was, he said, exceedingly ill and
was worrying himself greatly about the matter. He had not long to live,
and I should be playing a very inhuman part if I did not grant the
interview to a very sick man. Melted by Boyd's evident sincerity and
anxiety I agreed, but only on the condition that if Mr. Rhodes had
anyone present at the interview, I also must have a friend present. That
I felt was rather an insulting condition, and I rather expected that Mr.
Rhodes would have replied: "If Mr. Strachey cannot treat me like a
gentleman, I don't want to see him." Instead, a most polite message came
back from Mr. Rhodes, saying that he gladly agreed to my suggestion and
that he would see me quite alone. Why Mr. Rhodes was so insistent as to
an interview I cannot tell, unless it was that he had been rather
worried about _The Spectator's_ hostility to him, and he thought he
might be able to mollify me in the course of a private talk. I remember
Mr. Boyd told me how he had heard Rhodes often express great trouble and
surprise at my attitude towards him. Why should a journalist whom he had
never seen be so hostile? What could have induced him to take the line
he took in _The Spectator_? "I have never been able to make him
out," was how he summed up the position. That struck me as very
characteristic. It had evidently never occurred to Rhodes that a
journalist could act on the watch-dog principle. The way his mind
appeared to work was something like this.
Strachey and _The Spectator_ are avowedly Imperialists and
strong anti-Little Englanders. Therefore they ought to be on
my side. If they are not with me, it can only be that they are
standing out for some reason or other. What is it? It isn't
money. If they had wanted to be "satisfied on this Charter"
they would have made it clear to me. It can't be pride or
prejudice. You can't wound or injure a man you have never
seen. As far as I know, Strachey has not been got at by any
of my personal enemies. He hates Kruger and his party even
more than he does me. It's a most disagreeable and distracting
puzzle.
That, I am told, was the way the great man argued till his
_entourage_ called the spectacle of the puzzled pro-consul deeply
pathetic. Rhodes was, I believe, genuinely "haunted" by the problem
which he could not solve. I and _The Spectator_ got on his nerves.
But perhaps if he saw me he could get the solution he desired. He had
squared Boers and Governors and high British Officials, and Generals and
Zulu Chiefs, and missionaries, and miners, and Jewish diamond-dealers by
talk and nothing more. Why not this journalist? He would try. He would
worry his secretaries to within an inch of their lives till they got the
Editor to see him.
Touched, as I have said, by the appeal about the anguish of the dying
lion, I yielded, went to his hotel, and was ushered in by Boyd. I did
not feel the charm which was supposed to flow from Rhodes. To begin
with, I thought him an ugly-looking fellow. The "late Roman Emperor"
profile was a very flattering suggestion. Instead, his appearance
explained a quaint and Early Victorian saying which had greatly tickled
me when it fell from Lord Cromer's lips. "I saw him once in Cairo. I
didn't like him. He seemed to me a great snob." Rhodes ought to have had
the manners and mental habits of a gentleman, but apparently these had
suffered a good deal of dilution in the diamond-fields. His address was
distinctly oily, and I remember thinking what a mistake he had made in
his conception of the stage directions for the short dialogue scene
which he had insisted on his entourage producing.--"_Empire-
Builder_, generous, human, alert, expansive, and full-blooded.
_Publicist_, dry, thin-lipped, pedantic, opinionative, hard." That
was what he, no doubt, expected of the cast. In a word, his attempt to
fascinate lacked polish. It was clumsy, almost to the point of
innocence, and opportunist to the point of weakness. He did not know how
to take me, and was obviously "fishing."
I was determined to seize the opportunity of telling Mr. Rhodes fairly
and squarely what I thought of him and his policy. I therefore received
his elephantine flatteries and civilities with a grim silence, and then
told him I should like him to know what had made me oppose him, and
would continue to make me do so. I was an Imperialist, I pointed out,
and I regarded him as an enemy to the cause of my country. He had given
payments of money to the Irish enemies of Britain and the Empire, and
that I could never forgive. "The Parnellites were engaged in a plot to
ruin the British Empire. You knew it, and yet you helped them. You gave
them the means to arm and fortify their conspirators and assassins." Mr.
Rhodes appeared put out by this frontal attack--no doubt an unpleasant
one, and so intended. He began by making elaborate explanations, and by
declaring "the dates won't fit," but his arguments were muddled and
incoherent. "I assure you you are doing me wrong about the Irish policy.
I know it is not an intentional injustice, but indeed you are wrong. I
am sure I could convince you of this if there was only time."
Though I was not mollified I felt there was no more to be said. Mr.
Rhodes was not going to convince me nor I to convert him. Accordingly, I
got up and moved to the door. On this Mr. Rhodes said, very
flatteringly, by way of goodbye, that he was greatly pleased that "these
letters," as they were obliged to be published, should appear in _The
Spectator_. His device was pathetically obvious. He knew, or believed
he knew, that the journalist's passion was "copy," and he wanted to
remind me that he had supplied me with one of the very best political
"stories" ever put before an Editor.
I was comparatively a young man then, only a little over forty, and I
was disgusted at what I felt was an impertinent attempt to "land" me. I
instantly pulled the papers out of my pocket and flung them on to the
table, saying,
You are entirely mistaken if you think I want your letters for
_The Spectator_. As far as I am concerned, they may just as
well appear in _The Times_ or any other paper. All I want is
publicity. I have been accused by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
of publishing lies, and that I do not mean to endure.
I make no claim, however, on behalf of _The Spectator_. Choose
your own paper.
Here Mr. Rhodes showed an excellent command of himself. He urged me
strongly, nay, he implored me to take the papers. No other course would
be fair to his secretary, who had been called a liar. "As poor Boyd was
unjustly accused of lying, in _The Spectator_, I am sure you will
agree that it is only fair that his good faith should be vindicated in
the same place." To this plea I could, of course, offer no opposition. I
therefore replaced the papers in my pocket, said "good morning," and
walked away.
I suppose many people, certainly Mr. Rhodes's admirers, will say that I
was brutal and unjust. If they do, I think I have a good defence, but I
am not going to set it forth here. More interesting is the general
opinion I formed of Rhodes after seeing him in the flesh, and
experiencing what was supposed to be his special gift--that of talking a
man round.
Rhodes, I had to acknowledge, was not the kind of magnificent man that I
had sometimes envisaged him. I think he was a lucky man rather than a
man of genius. The chief trouble with him was that he really believed
that all men were buyable. He was a kind of throw-back to the eighteenth
century, just as the eighteenth-century politicians were to the age of
Juvenal and Tacitus. He took their records seriously and acted on their
views of humanity. If he chose to use his money for buying policies as
other people used theirs to buy places, why not? What else, granted that
he was the kind of man described, could Rhodes do with his money?
But these excuses, though I admitted them, made me not less but more
eager to oppose Mr. Rhodes and the influences he employed. My duty was
to expose Mr. Rhodes, _i.e._ to get people to understand his
methods. These almost entirely depended upon secrecy, and that made
publicity my best weapon. When once the Rhodesian moral strategy was
made public, the game was up.
I believe I did some good by my double warning. In the first place, I
warned the British public that Rhodes, if not watched, would secretly
buy policies behind their backs and that the party machine, when in want
of money, would with equal secrecy sell them. And I proved my point,
incredible as it may seem.
"But why rake up an old scandal?" asks Urbanus with an ironic smile.
Because the warning ought to be a standing warning. I am by no means
sure that when all the secrets are known, we, or rather our
grandchildren, will not find that Mr. Rhodes has had imitators, in
recent times.
I could, of course, mention other examples of the way in which this
particular watch-dog gave trouble, and got himself heartily disliked,
but the one I have given will serve. Besides, the other examples touch
living people, and with living people I want to have as little to do as
possible in these memoirs.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PLACE OF THE JOURNALIST IN MODERN LIFE
The watch-dog's function by no means exhausts the work of the
journalist. There remains that strange function which is not yet quite
realised or understood in a modern community, the function of publicity.
Publicity is, in one sense, the method or instrument by which the watch-
dog gives its warning: it is his bark. But there is something more in
publicity than this. Publicity is an end as well as a means. There are
positive and distinct virtues inherent in publicity quite apart from the
fact that it is the medium through which the journalist works. This fact
is beginning to be realised more and more in this country. In America,
it has long been recognised. There, indeed, publicity may be said to
have been crowned. It is considered one of the pillars of society, and
so in truth it is.
I can best illustrate what I mean by this, by telling a story of Delane,
the editor of _The Times_ when _The Times_ was at its greatest.
It is one which should never be forgotten by the critics of journalism
and journalists. Someone had been taking Delane to task over an
incident connected with his newspaper, and Delane replied: "You
appear to forget that my business is publicity." If the public would not
forget this essential fact in regard to newspapers they would attain to
a much clearer and juster understanding of the problems of the Press. We
must always remember that the journalist's business is publicity. At
first the plain man may be inclined to say that Delane's words have
nothing to do with the matter, or, rather, he may feel inclined to reply
in the spirit of Talleyrand's answer to the man who said he had to live--
"I do not see the necessity." A very little reflection, however, will
show the necessity of publicity, will show, I mean, that publicity has a
real and very important function in the State, and that it is literally
true that the modern world could not live and progress without the
newspaper. The newspaper is indispensable to progress, and to progress
in the right direction. Unless we know, day by day, what people are
doing, in our nation, in our country, in our town, in our village, we
should be like men wandering about in the dark, and we should find it
far more difficult than we do now to obtain the co-operation of others
for good and worthy objects. We should fail also to get that
encouragement, moral, intellectual, and social, which is obtained by
knowing that others are thinking the same thoughts and entertaining the
same aspirations that we are. It is good to know of the righteous work
which is being done by others. It is even good to know, within
reasonable limits, the evil that is being done under the sun, in order
that we may lay our plans and bring up our forces to check that evil.
Without that daily report on the world's doings, which is the modern
newspaper, we should for the most part be blind and deaf, and if not
dumb, at any rate hardly able to speak above a whisper.
This view may at first sight seem the presumptuous claim of a journalist
for his trade. Let any of my hearers, however, try to imagine a
newspaperless world and he will soon realise that I am not exaggerating.
It is not merely a desire for amusement that makes the leaders of men in
a besieged town, or even in so narrow a field as an Arctic expedition,
encourage the foundation of a newspaper. They want it as a means of
illumination quite as much as of entertainment.
People sometimes talk of men's instinctive desire for news, but, like
many other instincts, this one is founded on convenience and the law of
self-preservation. Readers of Stevenson's _Kidnapped_ will remember
how, after the Appin murder, the fugitives on the heather obeyed, even
at very great risk to themselves, the sacred duty of the Highlands to
"pass the news." In savage countries and in troubled times a man is
looked upon as a wild beast rather than a human being if he does not
pass the news. Asian travellers dwell upon the way in which the Bedouins
observe the duty of passing the news, and described how, if a solitary
Arab is encountered, the news is, as a matter of course, passed to him.
The seclusion of women even yields to this imperative law of the desert,
and an Arab man and an Arab woman may be seen with their horses, tail to
tail, and so themselves back to back also, giving and receiving the news
over their shoulders.
I am tempted to give a modern example of the advantage of news in the
purest sense. Some years ago, in the course of one of those brave
attempts which have been made to cleanse the Augean stable of municipal
politics in San Francisco, the editor of the chief newspaper engaged in
the campaign of purity was kidnapped in the streets of San Francisco. He
was hurried off in a motorcar and placed under restraint in a train at a
suburban station, from which he was to be carried to a place some 500
miles away. It happened, however, that a reporter caught sight of the
editor's face in the reserved portion of the Pullman car where he was
imprisoned, and telegraphed to a San Francisco evening paper that the
well-known Mr. So-and-So was "on the ---- train, going North." The
reporter had not the slightest notion of the romantic circumstances of
the kidnapping and thought he was merely telegraphing an item of social
news. One of the editor's colleagues in the campaign against corruption
happened, however, to see this item in the evening paper and at once
realised what it meant. He instantly telephoned to the proper
authorities at a town halfway between San Francisco and the kidnappers'
destination; the train was stopped, and the kidnapped man brought before
a judge on a warrant of Habeas Corpus, and promptly released. No doubt
mere publicity can occasionally serve the evildoers equally well, but
here, at any rate, is an instance of its utility which may be regarded
as proof of the advantage of collecting and transmitting news even of
the most unimportant, or apparently unimportant, kind.
Though I hold that publicity is a function of very real utility to the
State, it must not be supposed that I think it can be practised without
limitations, or that I do not realise that it has dangers both great and
many. It has been said that honesty is not as easy as Blind Man's Buff.
The same thing may well be said of publicity. The first and most obvious
limitation of publicity is that publicity should only be given to truth
and not to error. Here, however, we must not forget that there are
certain forms of error which can only be exposed and got rid of by
publicity, and, again, that it is often only possible to find out what
is truth and what error by submitting the alleged facts to the test of
publicity. What at first seems an incredible rumour turns out to be
literally true, and therefore a failure to report it would actually have
been a suppression of the truth. The more one studies this question of
publicity the more it appears that what is wanted in the public interest
is a just and clear understanding of the way in which publicity is to be
achieved. The journalist's business is publicity, but it is also his
business to see that this duty of publicity, though carried out to the
full, is carried out in a way which shall do not harm but good. If the
methods of publicity are sound, fearless, and without guile, all is
well. If they have not these qualities, then publicity may become the
most dishonourable and degrading of all trades.
It must not be supposed, however, that by saying this I am trying to
give a defence of the Yellow Press. I fully realise its evils, only I
desire that the Yellow Press should be condemned for its faults, and not
merely for its virtues when carried to excess. What the Yellow Press
should be condemned for is its tendency to that supreme evil--
indifference to veracity of statement. Another of its extreme evils, an
evil made possible by publicity, is that of triviality. It debauches the
public mind, in my opinion, much more by its triviality than by its
vulgarity or grossness. Sensationalism and want of reticence will in the
end cure themselves, but triviality is a defect which grows by what it
feeds on. People get a habit of reading silly details about silly
people, and the habit becomes an actual craze; they can no more do
without it than they can rest without chewing gum. This triviality is
indeed twice cursed. It degrades both him who reads and him who writes.
As to the public, indeed, I sometimes feel inclined to say with Ben
Jonson in his famous Ode:
If they love lees and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not their palates with the swine.
But it is a pitiful sight to see unfortunate men who might do better
work, condemned to filling the trough with insipid and unsavoury swill
collected from the refuse-pails of the town.
Twenty years ago, I had a conversation in regard to this point with the
reporters of two very Yellow newspapers, on an Atlantic liner outside
the port of New York. The _Lucania_ had run upon a sand-bank, and
we had to wait all day in sight of that towered city, exposed to the
full fury of the interviewer. When I ventured to ask the two reporters
in question whether they did not think it was perfectly absurd and
ridiculous to print the chronicles of small beer, or, rather, of small
slops, such as appeared in their columns, they readily, and I believe
perfectly honestly, agreed, but said in defence that they had to obey
their editor's orders. To me, at any rate, they acted most honourably
and gave no report of our conversation, for I had reminded them that dog
did not eat dog. A third reporter, however, to whom I had not thought it
necessary to indicate as "private and confidential" an enthusiastic
remark drawn by the beauty of New York harbour in an autumn sunset, was
not so sensitive. "This is more splendid," I said, "than even the
approach to Venice. There is nothing in the whole world like the sea-
front of New York seen from the sea." This reporter honoured me next day
with a headline of such magnificent triviality that I cannot refrain
from quoting it: "_Editor Strachey says New York skins Venice!_"--a
contribution to the illimitable inane worthy to stand by a headline in
an English provincial paper: "_Vestryman choked by a whelk!_"
Publicity, when it is honest publicity, is as important a thing as the
collection and presentation of evidence at a trial. Without the
evidence, of what avail would be advocacy or judgment? I have dealt with
the problem of publicity, but publicity of course is not the whole of
journalism. Besides news there is comment, and comment, at any rate
among serious-minded people like the British, is quite as well thought
of as news. It is with that part of journalism, indeed, that the editor
of a weekly newspaper has most to do. The journalism of comment may be
divided into parts, both perfectly legitimate. There is what I may term
judicial journalism, and the journalism of advocacy. In judicial
journalism the writer attempts to approach the jury of the public rather
as a judge than as a barrister, to sum up rather than make a speech for
the prosecution or the defence. This does not, of course, mean that he
does not in the end take a side or give a decision. He forms a view and
states it, but in stating it he admits the existence of the other side
and does not try to carry the jury away with him by the arts of
rhetoric. Such journalism is not necessarily cold-blooded. Just as a
judge may denounce baseness or misconduct in burning words, so the
journalist who endeavours to maintain the judicial attitude may, when
the necessity arises, be strong in his denunciation of what he holds to
be weak, dangerous, or evil. He, however, who is bold enough to essay
this form of journalism must never forget that a judge who professes to
be judicial in tone, but who ends in being partial, is a worse man than
an honest advocate, because he is, in fact, cloaking partisanship by
hypocrisy.
Little need be said in defence of the advocate journalist. He makes no
pretence to be doing anything but pleading the cause of his party, and
placing it in the best possible light. It is not his business, but that
of the opposition writer, to put the case for the other side, and if he
occasionally pretends to an enthusiasm which does not really belong to
him, he is only practising the innocent artifice of the counsel who
tells the jury that he will be an unhappy man should he have failed in
the task of persuading them to restore his long-suffering, if
burglarious, bibulous, or bigamous, client to his best wife and family.
It must not be supposed, however, that the advocate journalist is a
cynic who realises that his own cause is a poor one, but calls it the
best of causes because he is paid so to do. That, as all men of
experience know, is a fallacy as regards the barrister, and it is still
more a fallacy as regards the journalist. We should remember the story
of the barrister who, at the end of a long career, declared that he had
been singularly fortunate. He had never been called upon to defend a
guilty person or to argue a case where the merits and the law were not
strongly on his side. If this feeling grows up in the case of a man who,
changing from prosecution to defence and from plaintiff to defendant,
may often have to alter his point of view completely, how much more is
it likely to grow up in that of the advocate journalist who is always on
the same side? Believe me, the notion of the political journalist
perpetually writing leaders against his own convictions is a pure
figment of the popular imagination. No doubt an editor will sometimes
ask a leader-writer not to put a particular view so strongly as he, the
leader-writer, is known to feel it, but such reticence cannot surely be
regarded as insincerity on the ethics of anonymity in journalism. The
public are apt to suppose that anonymity is the cloak of all sorts of
misdoings, and I have often heard people declare that in their opinion
every leader-writer should be forced to sign his name. As I once heard
it picturesquely expressed, "The mask should be torn from the villain's
face. Why should a man be allowed to stab his neighbour in the dark!" As
a matter of fact, I am convinced that anonymity makes, not for
irresponsibility but for responsibility, and that there are many men
who, though truculent, offensive, and personal when they write with the
"I," will show a true sense of moderation and responsibility when they
use the editorial "we." The man who writes for a newspaper very soon
gets a strong sense of what is right and proper to be said in that
particular organ, and he instinctively refuses to give way to personal
feeling and personal animosity when he is writing, not in his own name,
but in that of his newspaper.
I have hated and distrusted So-and-So ever since I was at
Cambridge with him. I know what a false-hearted creature
he was then, and how vain and supercilious, and I should like
to get my knife into him some day. I feel, however, that the
_Daily Comet_ could not possibly attack him in this way. Even
though my editor has told me that I may say what I like about
him it would not be fair to go for him unless I signed my name.
That is an imaginary soliloquy which, I am sure, represents the feelings
of plenty of leader-writers when confronted with a personal issue.
Again, men who write anonymously, and in the name of their paper and not
of themselves, are much less likely to yield to the foolish vanity of
self-assertion. When Zola visited England, I remember a very striking
passage in which he expressed to an interviewer his astonishment at the
anonymity of the British Press. He wondered how it was that our writers
refused themselves the "delicious notoriety" which they might obtain
through signed articles. Thank heaven, our writers prefer the dignity
which can be maintained through the honourable tradition of a great
journal to such "delicious notoriety" The delicious notoriety of the
individual is the ruin of the better journalism.
Again, we must never forget that the signed article, however true and
sound it may be, is always to some extent discounted through the
personality of the writer. "A" may have written in perfect sincerity of
a particular statesman, but if he signs his name the gossip-mongers are
sure to say that the article in question is to be accounted for by the
fact that a fortnight before the writer was stopping with the Cabinet
Minister who has been well spoken of, or because the writer's wife is
well known to be a friend of the statesman, or for some equally trivial
reason. Just as a good chairman of a committee should sink his
individuality and speak for the committee as a whole, so a good leader-
writer can with perfect honesty and sincerity sink his individuality and
speak for his newspaper rather than himself.
But, though I incline to anonymity as the rule of political journalism,
I quite admit that in pure literature and in the arts the signed article
is often to be preferred. For the object with which the reader
approaches a literary article is the desire for pleasure, and that
pleasure is naturally heightened by knowing the name of the actor who is
on the stage. Though it might be an amusing trick it would be on the
whole very disappointing to the public if the play-bill on which the
names of the characters appear had instead of the actors' names
arbitrary letters, like X, Y, and Z. They would probably not appreciate
the task of guessing who was concealed under the wig or the shadows
painted on the face which converted Miss Jones' somewhat aquiline
features into a _nez retroussé_. No one can doubt that the Parisian
public liked to know that the _Causeries de Lundi_ were by Sainte-
Beuve, just as they now like to see the signature of Mr. J. C. Squire at
the end of an article. To push the point to extremes, who would care to
grope through a nameless Georgian Anthology in which each poem had to be
taken on its intrinsic merits? Even if the public could stand the test,
I feel certain that the critics could not. I have always had a good deal
of sympathy for the dramatic critic in Mr. Shaw's play when he declares
that he can place a play with perfect certainty if he knows whom it was
written by, but not unless. Fancy the poor critic going through a volume
and saying to himself: "Now is this Shanks or is it Graves trying to
score off him by a parody? Again, is this one of the Sitwells writing
like Sassoon in order to drive the grocers to delirium?" But, harrowing
thought, perhaps it is neither, but only some admirer of the Georgian
Mind at Capetown or Melbourne, who has produced for his own use an
amalgam of several styles. The mere writing about it is making me so
uncomfortable that I must hastily desist!
There is another point upon which I must touch, though very shortly.
That is the ethics of newspaper proprietorship. People sometimes talk as
if it were a great misfortune that the newspapers of England are, as a
rule, owned by rich men. I cannot agree, though I do think it is a great
misfortune that a newspaper cannot be started by a poor man. My reason
for desiring that as a rule a newspaper proprietor should be rich is the
danger of newspapers being bought, or, at any rate, of their articles
being bought, as too often happens in countries where newspapers are not
great properties. It is often said, for example, that a hundred pounds
or so will procure the insertion of an article in most continental
newspapers. This is no doubt a gross libel on the best foreign
newspapers, but it indicates a danger when newspapers are owned by men
of small means and make small profits. When a newspaper is bringing in
£50,000 or £60,000 a year it is obvious that even if we assume the
newspaper proprietor to have no sense of public duty, it will not be
worth his while to sell the influence of his paper. He is not going to
risk the destruction of a great property--destruction would surely
ensue from his corrupt act becoming known--for a few hundred pounds. To
put it brutally, "his figure" would be too high for any to pay--a
quarter of a million at least.
But though it makes for soundness that newspaper proprietors should be
personally independent, it is also most important that they should be
men whose wealth is derived from their newspapers and not from other
sources. A great newspaper in the hands of a man who does not look to
make a profit but owns it for external reasons is a source of danger.
Strange as it may seem at first sight, the desire for direct and
legitimate profit in a newspaper is an antiseptic and prevents
corruption. One does not want to see a newspaper proprietor, with his
ear to the ground, always thinking of his audience, but the desire to
stand well with his readers is often a power in the direction of good.
The proprietor who endeavours to be the honest servant of his readers
will not go very far wrong. When I say honest servant I mean the man who
plays the part of the servant who, though he will do his master's
bidding when that bidding is not positively immoral, at the same time is
prepared to warn that master, courteously but firmly, against rash or
base actions. There is nothing corrupt in such honest service, when
rendered either to a man or a nation, or even to a Party.
To put it in another way, there are worse things than studying public
opinion and endeavouring partly to interpret it honestly and partly to
guide it in the right direction.
I will end this chapter by asking the readers of a Journalist's Memoirs
to do two things. Firstly, to think better of journalists and their
morals than they are at first sight inclined to do. Secondly, not to
exaggerate the influence and power of the Press. No doubt it has some
great powers, but those powers are much more limited than is popularly
supposed. Remember that by using exaggerated language in regard to the
power of the Press, people increase the evil which they desire to
diminish. Dr. Johnson said very truly that no man was ever written down
except by himself. Believe me, this is as true now as when Dr. Johnson
said it. I do not believe in the power of the Press either to crush a
good man and a great man, or to exalt a weak man or a base man. No doubt
a conspiracy of journalists might conceivably keep back a wise statesman
or public man for a year or two, and, again, might for a time advertise
into undue prominence an inferior man. In the end, however, matters
right themselves. The public have a very sound instinct in persons as
well as in things, and when they recognise real worth in a man they will
know how to prevent the newspaper from doing him wrong, supposing him
for some reason to have incurred the enmity of the whole Press--not an
easy thing to accomplish. If the _Dictator_ makes a dead set
against Smith, the _Detractor_ is pretty sure to find good in him,
and may even run him as a whole-souled patriot! We are a contradictious
trade.
_Don't be afraid of the Press, but do it justice and keep it in its
place, that is, the place of a useful servant, but not of a master._
This is the last word on the Press of a working journalist, one who,
though he holds no high-falutin' illusions as to his profession, is at
the same time intensely proud of that profession, and who believes that,
taken as a whole, there is no calling more worthy of being practised by
an honourable man, and one who wishes to serve his country.
CHAPTER XXII
A WAR EPISODE-MY AMERICAN TEA-PARTIES
The war is too near, too great, and also too much an object from which
people turn in weariness and impatience to be dealt with by me, except
very lightly. In spite then of the transcendent effect which the war had
upon my life I shall only touch upon one or two salient points. The
first that I select is as curious as it was interesting. It is also
appropriate, for it marked a step, and a distinct step, if one which
covered only a small space, towards the goal that I have always put
before me. That goal is a good understanding between both branches of
the English-speaking race. It involves above all things that Americans
shall never be treated, either in thought, in deed, or in word, as
foreigners. When the war had been going a week or two, I and a number of
other editors were summoned to a solemn conclave presided over by a
Minister of the Crown. We were asked to give advice as to how the
Government should deal with the American correspondents. Owing to the
increasing severity of the censorship they were unable to get any news
through to their newspapers. Though they were quite friendly and
reasonable in one sense about this, they were in a state of agitation
because their editors and proprietors on the other side, unable as yet
to understand what modern war meant, and to envisage its conditions,
were cabling them imperative messages to send something, and something
of interest, to the American public which was suffering from a news-
hunger such as had never before existed in the world's history. If the
correspondents could not get anything to send they must make room for
those who could. The notion that the order for news could not be obeyed
was regarded as "impossible."
But the Government, though anxious to do everything they could for the
American correspondents, was itself in the grip of the censorship. The
Prime Minister's speeches, even, were censored lest they should afford
information to the enemy. This policy of intensive suppression was
enforced by all sorts of gloomy prophecies from Naval and Military
chiefs:
If you allow things to be sent out before they have been
carefully considered, and that means long considered, we cannot
be responsible for the consequences. Things which look
perfectly innocent to you or to the people who send them, when
read by the keen-eyed men in the German Intelligence Office
may give them all sorts of hints as to what are our doings and
intentions. By pleasing one American newspaper you may
send thousands of men to their doom by sea or land.
That being the tone of the Censor's Office, the Government was naturally
in a state of perplexity. At the same time they felt, and rightly felt,
that it was most undesirable to confront our American friends of the
Press (for they were all friendly) with a pure _non possumus_. What
made it worse was the fact that the correspondents had told Ministers in
plain terms that if they could get no news here they must pack their
portmanteaus and go to Holland and thence to Berlin, where
correspondents were made much of and allowed to send any amount of
wireless.
Many plans were suggested at the meeting, but those which found favour
with the Press made the representatives of the Government shiver with
horror, while the official suggestions, on the other hand, were, I am
afraid, greeted with polite derision by the journalists. Greatly daring,
I proposed that we should do for the American correspondents what was
done for them in their own country by the President. President Wilson
met the correspondents at Washington every Monday for a confidential
talk of twenty minutes or so. What he said and they said was not to be
reported, but they were "put wise" as to the general situation. I
suggested that in a similar way Mr. Asquith might give a quarter of an
hour once a week to the American correspondents. He would not, of
course, be able to give them anything to publish, but at any rate if
they saw him they would not feel so utterly out of it as they were at
the moment. To see no one but a Censor who always said No, was like
living on an iceberg on a diet of toast-and-water. They would be able at
least to cable to their chiefs saying that they had seen the Prime
Minister and had heard from him the general outline of the situation,
though they could not at present publish any of the confidences which
had been entrusted to them. Anyone who knows anything about the
relations between the Government and the Press at the beginning of the
war will be amazed at my daring, or shall I say "impudence"?--though by
no means astonished to hear of the response with which it met. The
spokesmen of the Government said in effect: "Mr. Strachey, you must be
mad to make any such suggestion. It cannot be entertained for a moment.
You must think of something better than that." Unfortunately I could
think of nothing better, the other journalists could think of nothing
better, the officials could think of nothing better, and so the meeting,
as the reporters say, broke up, if not in confusion, at any rate in
depression.
I was so much alarmed by the notion of the correspondents leaving the
country, and also sympathised so strongly with my American colleagues
that I felt that I must do something on my own. I therefore went
straight back to Brooks' and wrote to Mr. Asquith, telling him what the
situation was, what I had proposed, and how I was regarded as quite
crazy. I went on to say that I knew this would not affect his mind, but
that I was afraid that he would probably not be able to spare the time
for a weekly interview, and that I therefore suggested a compromise.
Will you [I said] come and lunch with me next Wednesday
at my house at 14 Queen Anne's Gate to meet all the American
correspondents, and so at any rate give them one talk? As it
happens I don't know any of the American correspondents,
even by name. All the same, I am quite certain that if you
show them this mark of your confidence you will never regret
it. There is not the slightest fear of any betrayal. I am,
indeed, perfectly willing to guarantee, from my knowledge of
the honour of my own profession, that not a single word that
you say but do not want published will ever be published.
In a word, I guaranteed not merely the honour but the discretion of my
colleagues from across the water. I am not a political admirer of Mr.
Asquith, and have had, perhaps, to pummel him with words as much as any
man in the country. I was not, however, the least surprised to find that
he would not allow himself to be overborne by the suggestion of his
subordinates that the scheme was mad and so forth. Very
characteristically he wrote me a short note with his own hand, simply
saying that he would be delighted to meet my friends at lunch on
Wednesday next as proposed. This acquiescence relieved me greatly, for I
was convinced that the situation was exceedingly dangerous and
disagreeable.
My next step, and one that I had to take immediately, was to get my
guests together. As I have said, I knew nothing of them and for a moment
thought it not improbable that even if I did manage to get hold of their
names and addresses they might when they received the letter think it
was a hoax. However, the thing had to be done, so it was no use to waste
time by foreseeing difficulties. My first step was to get the help of my
friend, Sir Harry Brittain (then Mr. Brittain). I wrote to him, asking
for the names and addresses of all the correspondents of American
newspapers in London, for I had reason--I forget exactly why--to believe
that he possessed the information I so greatly needed. The messenger
whom I had despatched with my note brought back a prompt answer
conveying the information I required. I immediately sat down, dictated
my notes, about twenty I think, and had them posted. In these I
described the situation quite frankly. I said that as a journalist I had
been very much struck and also very much worried by the thought of the
situation in which the correspondents had been placed. They were, I
said, like men in a house in which all the lights had gone out, and that
house not their own. In such circumstances, who could wonder if they
knocked over half the furniture in trying to find their way about or to
get hold of a light somewhere. I ventured further to propose, though not
known to them, that they should give me the pleasure of their company at
luncheon on the following Wednesday, at 14 Queen Anne's Gate, to meet
the Prime Minister, in order that they might, by means of a talk with
him, get a general outline of the situation.
I knew, of course, that it was not necessary to put my colleagues
formally on their honour not to publish anything without definite leave
so to do. The first principle upon which an American correspondent acts
is that, though he expects frankness from the people he talks to,
nothing will ever induce him to reveal what he has been told is
confidential and not for publication. You can no more get stuff not
meant for publication from an American correspondent than you can get
the secrets of the confessional from a priest. Reticence is a point of
honour. I have no doubt that some of my American journalistic friends
will say that there is no great merit in this, because the
correspondents know quite well that if they were once to betray a public
man they would never have a chance to do it again. Their professional
careers would be utterly ruined. Though I should not agree that self-
preservation was the motive, I knew at any rate that every consideration
of sound business and professional pride as well as of honour made it
quite certain that there would be no betrayal.
I was, therefore, most anxious not to appear ignorant of this fact or to
seem to doubt my guests. Accordingly I merely added that whatever was
said was not for publication and also that I was anxious that the fact
of this luncheon taking place should not be disclosed. I gave my reason.
If the luncheon, and if any other meetings which I hoped to arrange,
became known about by the representatives of Foreign newspapers, I felt
that pressure might be put upon me to include them in my invitations.
The result would be a small public meeting, and not an intimate social
function such as I desired. My wishes were respected in every way. No
word said at the luncheon, or at any of the weekly gatherings that
followed it for nearly three years, was ever made public. Further, their
existence was never alluded to, though the meetings would have made
excellent copy, quite apart from anything that was said at them. The
secret was religiously kept.
I was deeply touched by the letters which I received in reply to my
invitation. They were all from men then unknown to me, though I am glad
and proud to say that many of them were from men who have since become
intimate friends. They were written with that frankness, genuineness,
and warmth of feeling which are characteristics of the American, and
contrast so strongly with the stuttering efforts of the Briton to be
genial and forthcoming.
Owing to the fact that we had moved to our house in the country in the
last days of July, 1914, my London house was shut up except for a
caretaker, and my wife could not bring up servants for the occasion or
give me her help, which would have been invaluable, because she was
tremendously busy with Red Cross organisation and getting our house
ready for what it was so soon to become, _i.e._ a hospital with
forty beds. I had, therefore, to do the necessary catering myself. I
felt that, considering the need for discretion, my best plan would be to
go to so old-fashioned an English house as Gunter's. The very name
seemed stable and untouched by the possibility of spies.
Accordingly I told Gunter's representative to make arrangements for a
luncheon for twenty people and to be sure that all the waiters were
Englishmen and, if possible, old service men. That accomplished, I
awaited the hour. I do not think I was anxious as to how my party would
go off. I was much too busy for that. I was at the time deep in work
that I considered appropriate to the Sheriff of the County of Surrey,
which office I then held. On the Tuesday before the luncheon I was
sleeping at Queen Anne's Gate, but went as usual to _The Spectator_
office in the morning, transacted my business, and got back half-an-hour
before "zero," which was 1.30, so that I might arrange the places of my
guests, a task in which I was helped by Sir Eric Drummond, then Mr.
Asquith's Private Secretary. Unfortunately I have not a record of all
the people who were there, but I know that among them was Mr. Edward
Price Bell of the _Chicago Daily News_, known throughout the
newspaper world of London as the doyen of American correspondents. He is
a man for whom respect is felt in this country in proportion to the
great number of years which he has devoted not only to the service of
his newspaper but to improving the relations between this country and
his own. Mr. Price Bell is the most patriotic of Americans, but he has
never hesitated to make it clear that the word "foreign" does not apply
to the relations between Great Britain and America.
Mr. Roy Martin, now the General Manager of that wonderful institution,
The Associated Press of America, and his colleague and successor now
head of the London office, Mr. Collins; Mr. Keen of The United Press and
Mr. Edward Marshall of _The New York Times_ were certainly there.
Another of the men present with whom I was in the future to become
intimate was Mr. Curtis Brown, the well-known and very able Literary
Agent and the representative of the New York Press. It was, indeed, at
his suggestion that these Memoirs, which have proved the pleasantest
literary task ever undertaken by me, were begun and were placed in the
hands of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton in England and of Major Putnam in
the United States. Mr. Fred Grundy, Mr. Patchin, Mr. Tewson, and Mr.
Tuohy were also among my "first-nighters."
These men became the stalwarts of my regular parties, but there were
also a number of other good friends and men of interest and ability,
such as Mr. Palmer, who occupied journalistic posts here for a short
time only, and then were moved either to the front or to some other part
of Europe or back to their own country.
The luncheon proved a great success. From the first moment I realised
that there was to be no coldness or official reticence or shyness, but a
perfectly easy atmosphere. Mr. Asquith made himself exceedingly
agreeable to my guests, and they did the same, not only to him, but to
each other, to Mr. Asquith's staff, and to me, their host. Needless to
say that as my object was to introduce the journalists to Mr. Asquith
and get him to talk to them and they to him, I placed myself as far away
from him as I could, though I was still able, if the conversation
flagged (which, by the way, it never did) to put in a question or to
raise some point about which I knew there was a general desire to get
information. Wisely, as I think, I would have no speechmaking. After
luncheon we retired into my library for our coffee and cigars, and I was
then able to take each one of my guests up to Mr. Asquith for a few
minutes' talk. The result was excellent. Mr. Asquith was very frank,
but, though light in hand, he was as serious as the occasion demanded. I
felt that the general result was that my guests felt that they were
receiving the consideration they ought to receive, which I knew the
Government desired that they should receive, but which they had very
nearly missed, thanks to the fact that Governments so often find it
impossible to do what they ought to do, and, indeed, want to do.
Official efforts at politeness, instead of being the soft answers which
turn away wrath, too often prove violent irritants.
So great was the success of the luncheon that when it was over and Mr.
Asquith had to leave for a Cabinet Committee (he remained for over two
hours in the house--not a bad compliment to the correspondents in
itself, when one remembers that the date was early September, 1914), I
made the following proposal to my guests. I told them what a pleasure it
would be to me if we made an arrangement to meet at 14 Queen Anne's Gate
every Wednesday afternoon till further notice, for tea and cigarettes.
We were all busy, but we must all have tea somewhere, and why not in a
place close to the Houses of Parliament, the Foreign Office, Downing
Street, and the War Office? I went on to say that though I could not
promise a Prime Minister once a week, I would undertake to get one of
his colleagues or else some distinguished general or admiral whose
conversation about the war would be worth hearing, to ornament my
Conversazione. The proposal was met with the charming ease and good
sense with which every suggestion that I made to my guests was received,
and it was arranged that we should begin in the following week.
Oddly enough, I cannot now remember who was my next guest of honour, but
I do remember that in the course of that year I twice got Sir Edward
Grey, and that on one occasion he spent over two hours, from 4.30, that
is, until nearly 6.30, over my tea-cups. Other Cabinet Ministers were
equally obliging, and if I remember rightly, among the number were
included two Lord Chancellors, Lord Haldane, and Lord Buckmaster. Mr.
Balfour and Mr. McKenna were also visitors, as was Earl Grey--the cousin
of Sir Edward Grey. Lord Roberts was to have come, but Death intervened
to prevent his visit.
Lest the diet should be monotonous, I also got distinguished people like
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Admiral Sir Cyprian
Bridge, Admiral Sir Reginald Custance, General Ian Hamilton, and Admiral
Sir Reginald Hall, at that time the head of the Intelligence Department
at the Admiralty. There was also Sir Maurice Hankey, the Belgian
Minister, the American Ambassador, Mr. Page, and Colonel House, whom I
was lucky enough to catch on one of his flying visits. Last, but not
least, I had the two Censors, Sir Edward Cook and Sir Frank Swettenham.
It was as if The Thunderer and Mercury had descended to play with mere
mortals. My two naval experts, Admiral Cyprian Bridge and Admiral
Custance, were among the most constant supporters of my Conversaziones.
They proved very popular with the correspondents.
I know that the lions I provided for my arena in Queen Anne's Gate were
quite genuine when they told me how much they had liked meeting the able
and keenly-interested young men who formed the bulk of the
correspondents.
I suppose I ought not to flatter my own tea-parties, but I am bound to
say that I don't think I ever listened to better talk than the talk I
heard on those occasions. I specially remember a conversation which took
place when Lord Buckmaster became Chief Censor, shortly before he was
made Chancellor. Naturally enough, the correspondents were inclined to
be critical, though friendly, and he, though equally friendly, was
sternly determined to defend the policy which his office was pursuing.
Curiously enough, our dialectic on that occasion seemed to have made as
strong an impression upon others as upon myself. I found, later, one of
the most distinguished of news experts of his own or any other country,
Mr. Roy Martin, of the Associated Press of America, in a little tract
which he wrote about the censorship when America entered the war, spoke
of my parties and the talk with Lord Buckmaster in terms which showed
that he had been impressed. The tract in question was entitled
"Newspaper Men should direct the Censorship." The following is the
passage to which I am referring:
On the day when Lord Buckmaster became Lord High
Chancellor I met him at the hospitable home of St. Loe
Strachey, of _The Spectator_, the best friend American newspaper
men have had during this war, in London, and told him that
newspaper men had probably been a more constant nuisance to
him than to any man in Great Britain. With characteristic
suavity he assured me that he had only the pleasantest recollection
of all his relations with the press. An American
probably would have admitted a part of the indictment. We
do not produce that type of urbanity in this country; like the
colour on the walls of St. Paul's and the Abbey, it comes only
with centuries.
But all the dreadful lapses of the British censorship and all
its inequalities can be avoided by the United States. The
mistakes which required months to correct are signposts for us.
Its printed rules reveal its slow growth. Our censorship can
develop equal efficiency in a month, if it notes the charted
pitfalls in Whitehall.
I think my tea-parties would have run to the end of the war if it had
not been that my health temporarily gave way. Owing to my illness I had
to be a great deal away from London, and in any case was not equal to
the extra strain they imposed. If I remember rightly, the last meeting
was held at _The Spectator_ office, for 14 Queen Anne's Gate was
let at the time, _i.e._ in April or May, 1917.
I hope I shall not be thought indiscreet if I take note of an incident
which occurred in the last six months of the Strachey teas, for it
marked the extreme kindness, consideration, and true-hearted friendship
shown me by my guests. For some reason, I daresay a good one, though I
have forgotten it, the Foreign Office suddenly took it into their heads
that they might improve upon my tea-parties by making them more
official. Accordingly they asked me whether I should mind handing over
the conduct of them to a gentleman whom they named. He had lived, they
pointed out, for over twenty years in the United States and was
therefore likely to be a better host than I was. Indeed, it was
suggested, of course most politely and considerately, that on general
grounds he would be more acceptable to the correspondents than I should
be and would understand them better.
We were at war, and we did not in those days waste time upon
compliments, but spoke our minds freely--and quite rightly. I was not in
the least hurt. Though I loved the parties, which had given me such good
friends and such good talk, I was very busy, and indeed very much
overworked, and was in a sense relieved at the idea of getting a couple
of hours of much needed leisure in the week. Accordingly, it was
arranged that I should retire gracefully and recommend my official
successor to my American friends in a short speech. This I did with
perfect good-will. But the Foreign Office, though they did not reckon
without their host, had reckoned without his guests. When the concrete
proposal (well-meant, I am sure) was made in all its glorious naïveté in
a little speech by the new host, it was received with something like
annoyance--a fact which worried me not a little, for I had, rather
unwisely perhaps, assured my official mentors that there would be no
objection.
Things, however, went further than the grim silence with which the
initial proposal was met at what was designed to be "the positively last
appearance of Mr. Strachey." After a few days I heard that three or four
of the correspondents, representing the whole body (with their usual
tact they had kept this from me), had gone to one of the officials at
the Foreign Office and told him plainly that if the scheme was not
abandoned and I was not continued as host, they would none of them put
in an appearance at the weekly gatherings. The result was that the
official scheme was abandoned and that my Conversaziones continued as
before.
Many people may think this action somewhat strange. I do not think so.
Noting that I had only spent three weeks in America, it was most natural
that the officials concerned should consider that I must be ignorant of
American minds and ways and that my ignorance might be liable to become
offensive. But this view, to borrow Gibbon's immortal phrase, "though
probable is certainly false." It is logical, no doubt, but it is not
consistent with the inconsistency of human nature.
I ought, perhaps, at the same time to record that earlier in the war,
when, owing to the amount of work I had on hand, I offered to retire
from the office of host and let it be carried on by others, I was
sternly rebuked by the Prime Minister's Private Secretary, and told
peremptorily that it was my duty to go on exactly as before--a mandate
which I naturally regarded as a compliment as well as an order.
The incident was indeed a pleasant one, and I have reason to believe
that what I did was regarded with satisfaction and with gratitude by the
Prime Minister and his colleagues in the Cabinet. In any case, the whole
episode was characteristically English. I suggested it myself, I carried
it out myself, and though my little organisation had no regular official
sanction or recognition, it was regarded as I have just recorded as war-
work from which I could not retire, without leave. It was valued as a
useful method of keeping touch between the men who were directing the
war and the journalists of America. Without frightening anyone by making
official inquiries, it was easy to find out the temper of the men who
kept America informed. Those concerned had only to drop in at the next
Strachey tea and sound the correspondents.
Is it to be wondered at, then, that I am intensely proud of what I was
able to do? and proud in three capacities: as a man who wanted to help
his country during the war, as a working journalist who wanted to help
his colleagues, and last, but not least, as one whose life's object has
been to improve the relations between this country and America.
To this account of my tea-parties I will further add as a postscript
some proofs of what was the opinion of the correspondents as to these
gatherings.
I had plenty of kind words from my American journalist friends, but as,
I am thankful to say, they are almost all living, I shall obey my rule
and not quote their letters or my recollections of their words. One of
them, Mr. Needham, who, alas! died in an aeroplane accident in the
spring of 1915, wrote me a letter not long before he died, from which I
may quote the following. The letter was written from Paris, and is dated
11th April, 1915.
The thing I miss most, now that I am away from England,
is your charming tea every Wednesday afternoon. I know of
nothing to compare with it, and I find myself wishing that I
could drop in, have a good time, and incidentally pick up some
really useful knowledge, which one can't so easily do, you know.
Having said so much, I think I must quote the next sentence, because it
involved a question which was often discussed in the spring of 1915 at
the tea-parties. That was a rather plain-spoken article which I had
written in _The Spectator_ in regard to President Wilson's policy
of neutrality on a moral issue. I spoke frankly, and my words were not
unnaturally resented by those of Mr. Wilson's friends who were personal
admirers and supporters of the President.
I want to tell you, also, that privately speaking with my
finger to my lips, I quite approve of your article on Wilson.
You will find it hard, at least over here, to find anyone to disagree
with you, except, of course, on American top-soil,
namely, an American Embassy or Legation.
I may add another proof that the correspondents met my efforts to help
them and also do them the honour they deserved for the magnificent work
they did individually and collectively in preventing the growth of ill-
feeling, or, at any rate, misunderstanding, between what I may call
their and our two nations.
On November 4th, 1914, my friends gave me a dinner at Claridge's Hotel,
which was, I can say without flattery, the easiest, the most pleasant,
the most natural, the least strained function of the kind in which I
have ever taken part. Here is the list of my hosts--as representative a
body both for men and newspapers as any journalist could desire to
entertain him:
Edward Bell _Chicago Daily News_
Sam Blythe _Saturday Evening Post_
Curtis Brown _New York Press_
John T. Burke _New York Herald_
R. M. Collins _Associated Press_
Herbert Corey _Associated Newspapers_
Fred Grundy _New York Sun_
Edward Keen _United Press_
Ernest Marshall _New York Times_
Roy Martin _Associated Press_
H. B. Needham _Collier's Weekly_
Frederick Palmer _Everybody's_
Philip Patchin _New York Tribune_
Fred Pitney _New York Tribune_
J. Spurgeon _New York World_
W. Orton Tewson _New York American_
J. M. Tuohy _New York World_
The dinner was as good as the company, and that is saying a great deal.
I shall record the Menu, to show that in 1914 the cooks of London were
still bravely ignoring the ugly fact that we were at war.
MENU
Oyster Cocktail à la Strachey
Lobster-Newburg
Chicken à la Maryland
Selle d'Agneau
Haricots Verts
Pommes Anna
Bécassine Fine Champagne
Aubergine
Bombe à la Censor
Friandises
Cheese Savoury à la "Spectator"
Corbeilles de Fruits
Café--Liqueurs
The speeches I remember well. Those about me were much too flattering,
but I liked them none the less for that. I am sure they were sincere.
Certainly mine was. I had started out on the hard track of duty to my
profession and my country, and behold, it had turned into the Primrose
Path of pleasure! I expected to deal with a body of severe strangers and
I found myself with a band of brothers--men to whom you could entrust
your secrets in the spirit in which you entrust a bank with your money.
CHAPTER XXIII
IDYLLS OF THE WAR
People are getting tired of military controversies, and if they were
not, I should be precluded from dealing with them by the fact that I
intend to avoid as far as possible matters which concern living men,
unless these are non-contentious. _Horas non numero nisi serenas_.
Again, and even if it were desirable to add fresh fuel to the
controversial fire, I could not, speaking generally, add to knowledge
without violating confidence.
Nevertheless I cannot treat the war as if it had never existed, or as if
it had no influence on my life. It had, of course, a profound influence,
and that I am bound to display in an autobiography of the kind I am
writing.
This influence, however, must be gathered indirectly rather than
directly. All I propose to do at present is to touch the war on two
points. First, I want to give one or two examples of what I may call
"War Idylls"--recollections which were of so picturesque and poignant a
character that they made a fast impression on my mind. Later, I must say
something of the adventure of living continuously for four and a half
years in a hospital. There I learnt great and useful lessons about my
countrymen and countrywomen and confirmed from direct knowledge what had
been but guesses or intuitive visions.
My Idylls of the conflict are partly objective and partly subjective. In
my visits to the front and in such war-work as I did at home, I
witnessed many striking and even entertaining things, and I saw them at
moments of mental concentration and exaltation which no doubt heightened
them and sometimes made them assume an interest and importance not
altogether their own.
The first visit to the front undertaken by me began on the 8th of May,
1915, that memorable day on which was received the news of the sinking
of the _Lusitania_.
I shall not give any account of my feelings when hearing for the first
time a great cannonade, or seeing shells burst, or catching a glimpse of
the German line. Of all such things none were or could afford an
experience so terrible as the sight I saw at Bailleul. A number of men
still in the agonies of gas-poisoning, men hovering between life and
death, lay on their stretchers in rows in the vestibule of the Hospital,
awaiting removal. They spoke in strange, lifeless voices, like men
recalled from death by some potent spell. But on this unnecessary horror
of war I do not mean to dwell. I shall, however, quote from my War Diary
an account of a visit to the Scherpenberg, because it gives a glimpse of
a side of war too often neglected or ignored.
_May 19th, 1915:_--From the hospital we went to one of the most
wonderful places in the theatre of war, a place of which I had heard a
great deal, but not a word too much, from my guide. This was the
Scherpenberg. Directly overlooking the plain in which Ypres stands are
two hills, Scherpenberg and Kemmel. Kemmel is constantly being pounded
by artillery fire of all sorts, but Scherpenberg, for some strange or at
any rate unknown reason, is never shelled, and the windmill on the top
of it is still going merrily. As I sat on the grass of the hill-top,
with the men working at the mill behind us and a nightingale singing in
the little hazel brake on our left, it was very difficult to believe
that one was looking not only at the scene of recent battle, but at the
scene of a battle proceeding at that very moment. The Germans were
engaged in a fierce counter-stroke on the North-Eastern front of the
Ypres salient. The only indication was the bursting of a good deal of
shrapnel at this point. It was here that I first saw shrapnel shells and
noticed the little white puffs of smoke, which for all the world looked
like the steam let off by an ordinary locomotive. Behind us, or rather,
on the right of Scherpenberg hill, there was a big British gun which was
firing steadily on the German trenches. The rush of the shell made a
distinctly cheerful sound. My companion told me that the sound was
anything but cheerful when the direction was reversed and the shell,
instead of going from you, was coming towards you. Then the noise was
converted into a melancholy moan. While the German and British shrapnel
was bursting on the trenches to the North-East of us, there was
noticeable a good deal of dark cloud round Ypres, due, as we learnt
afterwards, to some buildings having been set on fire during the German
attack that morning. With glasses one could see quite clearly the tower
of the Cloth Hall, which had not apparently been at all injured. The
towers of the Cathedral were also quite plain, but owing to the roof
having been blown off, it was very difficult to realise that they
belonged to the same building and were not independent towers. The wood
to the South-East of Ypres was very clearly seen. This is the wood, as
far as I can make out, which R---- had on several occasions told me was
a dreadful place, filled with unburied bodies, pitted with shell-holes
and with half the trees broken by explosions and ready to fall. None of
this, however, could be seen from a distance. As one looked from the
windmill, Poperinghe with its prominent church spire was to the left and
it was quite impossible to discern anything abnormal in its appearance.
It looked even then like an ordinary prosperous Flemish town. In the
foreground, that is between the Scherpenberg and Ypres, lay what
everyone calls "Dickybush" and Voormezeele, or as the soldiers would
say, Vermicelli. There were plenty of people moving up and down the
road, which ran straight from the base of the Scherpenberg into Ypres,
passing through "Dickybush." The ground all round was being tilled quite
as assiduously as if there had been no war. In fact, close to us the
only difference the war made was that there were a great many Tommies,
either alone or in small parties, going backwards and forwards on the
road, just as one sees them at manoeuvres. They appeared to be perfectly
at home, quite cheerful, and on the best of good terms with the
inhabitants.
Just below the hill, or, rather, half-way down, is a very pleasant-
looking small farm, or big peasant's house. As I had not yet talked to a
Belgian peasant I felt I must make the picture complete by doing so. We
therefore went to the house and made an excuse for talking to the
people. Several women came out and all more or less talked volubly--but
unfortunately in Flemish. Soon, however, a typical farmer's daughter of
about sixteen or seventeen came out and fired off a great deal of very
bad French and English intermixed with Flemish. She was a pleasant-
looking, fat girl, with beady black eyes. She told us that she had been
living in Ypres up till a fortnight before. I suppose as a servant or
possibly in a shop. It seems that at first she found nothing
disagreeable in the bombardment, but of late things had got so hot that
she determined to leave. Indeed, although she looked the picture of
health and good spirits, she told us that towards the end she had felt
rather nervous. She had been near too many bursting shells and burning
houses and seen too many people killed. In fact, as the Tommies would
say, she could not stick it any longer. I asked her how she had got
away. The answer was simple. She had merely walked down the road to
Poperinghe and then, "fetching a compass" like St. Paul, had got into
"Dickybush" and so home. "A very long walk?" I queried. At this she
giggled, and added that "les soldats Anglais sont si gentils." She had
had a good many lifts in motor-cars on the road. I did not doubt it. She
was just the kind of girl, perfectly straight and of good intent I am
sure, who, whether in peace or war, would get lifts from any British
soldier engaged in driving anything, from a motor-car to a gun.
As we finished our conversation with the group of women I looked in at
the window with the innocent idea of seeing what the furnishings of a
Flemish farmhouse were like. There, to my amazement, I saw two prim and
perfectly well-behaved Tommies sitting at a table and just beginning to
have tea, or, rather, coffee. It was the modern version of those
seventeenth century Flemish pictures which one sees in most Museums,
where a brutal and licentious soldiery are in possession of some
wretched Belgian yeoman's house. The Tommies were, of course, going to
pay liberally for their coffee and were evidently behaving with the pink
of propriety.
From the farm we walked down the road half-way into "Dickybush" and
then, turning to the right, took a field-path up a little hill to get
one last view of Ypres under its canopy of mist and smoke, pierced by
the towers of the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral. The little field-path
was of the kind which one sees everywhere on the Continent, a path
somehow quite different from the English field-path. At the end of it
stood a typical Belgian peasant, for we were over the border. I asked
him a question, but he shook his head, for he could only talk Flemish,
and muttered something about "les Allemands," making the usual sign for
throat cutting. It was curious to see that this was not done in the
conventional, theatrical way, but with a grim stoicism which was not
unimpressive. He was not in any kind of panic and was working hard in
his fields. He meant merely to convey in gesture some expression like
"those damned cutthroats of Germans." I left the Scherpenberg Hill with
great regret. It was a wonderful "specular mount." As one stood by the
side of the windmill and gazed over the battle-ground, one seemed to get
war in its true perspective, something not quite as horrible or
sensational as one gathers from special correspondents at the front, and
yet something full of a deadly earnestness, intensity, and most
impressive fatefulness. Though one forgot it at moments, there was
always present to one's mind "the rough edge of battle" of which Milton
spoke, out yonder in the trenches. The battlefield seen from a distance
and in a position of complete safety is like going over a hospital and
seeing the flowers in the wards, the perfect sanitary arrangements and
the general air of orderly comfort, and ignoring the operating-theatre
with all its grim tragedies. In a battle of this kind the first-line
trench is the operating theatre, hidden away from the people who have no
business in it.
As a pendant to what I saw from the Scherpenberg while heavy fighting
was going on in the salient, I may set forth how, a year later (that is,
in August, 1916), I and a friend climbed the steep path of yellow sand
which leads to the top of "Le Mont des Cats," a sister summit. From this
isolated sandhill, one sees the whole plain of Flanders laid out like a
green map at one's feet. But on this occasion, instead of seeing, as I
had seen from the Scherpenberg, the pomp and circumstance of war, the
view on that particular August afternoon from the Mont des Cats was
apparently one of perfect peace.
The opposing armies lay quiet in their trenches. Only the boom of an
occasional gun which the foe or the British were firing (cheerfully
rather than sullenly) and now and then the noise of an "Archie" warning
a Taube to "keep off the grass" in the vault of Heaven, destroyed the
illusion of profound rest and reminded one that the wide world was at
war. Otherwise the pacific fallacy was for the moment complete. In the
sober sunlight of the late summer afternoon the whole earth seemed
lapped in happy slumber.
Yet two hours after, and at the actual sunset, so quick are the changes
at the front, the present writer, by that time off the hill and in the
plain below, saw the heavens gloriously alive with the pageantry of
conflict. The vault was pitted with woolly tufts of shrapnel and
beautiful dead-whitesmoke-wreaths from the phosphorescent bombs. These
spread their sinuous toils high and low and seemed to fill the skies. On
both sides the aerial combatants were going home to roost, exchanging
challenges by the way. And all the time, hidden in a hundred woods and
brakes, the Archies sang in chorus. These evening voluntaries, including
the winding-up of a good many aerial sausages, were competing with the
last rays of the glorious indolent, setting sun, and were made complete
and appropriate by a good deal of "field music" from the big guns. But
even this, though it was a reminder of war, seemed to those who watched
rather part of the setting of a dramatic fantasia of the sky than a real
cannonade. It was one of the most wonderful pageants of the sky that
human eyes ever beheld. Even Staff Officers stopped their cars and got
out to look. A series of accidents: a gorgeous sunset, a clear sky,
great visibility, all combined to make the empyrean into an operatic
"set" which Wagner might have envied but could never have imitated.
In November, 1915, I also paid a visit to the front. I had some exciting
moments, but here again I want to give, not war reminiscences which will
seem very small beer to half the population of the United Kingdom, but
merely to describe an incident which combined the picturesque and the
entertaining.
I was taken by my son-in-law, Captain Williams Ellis, and a life-long
friend, Lord Ruthven, then the Master of Ruthven, and chief Staff
Officer of the Guards Division, into the first trench-line opposite the
Aubers Ridge, and incidentally to view some of the worst and wettest
trenches on the whole front, at the moment held in part by my son-in-
law's regiment, the Welsh Guards. My guides naturally took me up a
communication-trench, named "Fleet Street," where one was always up to
one's knees in water and sometimes over them. They brought me back,
however, by Drury Lane, which was a somewhat drier street, also
appropriate to _The Spectator_. Here again I will quote from my
Diary:
When we emerged from the end of the Drury Lane communication-trench
upon the Route de Tilleloi, we proceeded down that excellent road,
discoursing on a hundred war topics. Suddenly, however, we came upon a
strange spectacle,--a row of men with their backs to the trench-line,
walking with extreme slowness and seriousness, in the most strict
alignment, both as regards their front and the distances between them,
across a piece of muddy pasture. The sun was just about to set, but the
light was good and we could see in this row of intent backs that there
was a subaltern in the middle and about eight or nine men on each side
of him. In solemn silence they went on their way. I was just beginning
to think within myself how very worthy it was of the said subaltern to
take out a section of his platoon and practise them in some particular
type of advance in open order, when, looking more closely at the line of
backs, I noticed that the men on the extreme right and left were
carrying something slung over their shoulders. I then saw that these
somethings were hares. The young devil of a subaltern, quite contrary to
orders and at the risk of courtmartial, was indulging in a hare drive
under shell-fire! His men, of course, were greatly delighted in the
adventure. The whole proceeding was marked by that seriousness which
Americans say is only shown by Britons when engaged in some form of
sport. Light-heartedness is good enough for the trenches, but not to be
thought of when on a predatory sporting expedition. Fortunately for my
conductor, the subaltern and his party did not belong to his Division,
and so he was able to turn a blind eye. My heart warmed to the young
wretch, but the authorities are perfectly right to be very stern in such
matters. All shooting is forbidden by the French law, and of course a
French proprietor feels it a horrible outrage that while he is not
allowed to shoot, some young English officer prances over his ground and
bags his hares. That is more than flesh-and-blood can stand, and one is
glad to think that it is being stamped upon. Still, when all is said and
done, I wouldn't have missed the sight of shooting hares under shell-
fire for anything in the world. It is correct to say that the drive was
conducted under shell-fire, but no one must suppose that shells were
exploding at everybody's feet. All the same, only a little time before a
shell did drop the other side of the shooting party, and a very little
time afterwards we saw one explode to the right, about two hundred yards
from where we were. In fact, the general position was not unlike that
described by Mr. Jorrocks: the shooters were having all the pleasures
and excitements of war with only one per cent. of the risks.
After a very pleasant visit to General French at his headquarters at St.
Omar, the visit ended with a touch of excitement.
On the morning of my departure, we received news that a hospital ship
had been sunk in the Channel. At 10.30, I finished my talk with Sir
John, got into a motor and drove to Boulogne. Having been told that all
the mines had been swept up and that everything was perfectly right, I
was to have started by the 12.15 boat, that is the boat which started an
hour after the doomed hospital ship. We were all told, however, that we
were not to cross by the said 12.15, or leave-boat, but must wait for
the P. & O. mail-boat. I rather kicked at this, but as all sorts of
generals and big wigs were placed under the same condemnation I saw it
was useless to protest, and went and had lunch. I can only presume they
had already had wireless news of the sinking of the hospital ship and
also of the steam collier, and wanted to be sure that there were no more
mines about. Accordingly we did not sail till 3.45, no one in the ship,
of course, knowing anything about the disaster. I only heard of it
coming up in the train to London, and then the news characteristically
came--not from a general with whom I was travelling--but from a
subaltern who had somehow picked up the news on the Folkestone quay....
It was curious to reflect that if anyone had offered me the opportunity
of going on a hospital ship as one of the sights, I should have closed
with it unhesitatingly. Luckily for me, however, I had not come across
any R. A. M. C. people, and therefore am still in a position to sign my
name to these notes. I managed to get to Brooks's for some late supper
at 9.30. At first I was told that I could only have cold beef, but not
being a Staff Officer, and not being afraid of being called a luxurious
and self-indulgent pig, I insisted upon having some hot soup and some
cold pheasant, and also a cup of hot cocoa. After this warming supper I
went to Garland's, and found awaiting me large packets of letters and
proofs. Next morning I was writing my Thursday leader at _The
Spectator_ office, "as usual."
My last and most exciting visit to the front took place on August 2,
1916, that is, just after the great attack on the Somme. Most of my
experiences, however, though very exciting to me at the time, would now
make very dull reading. Still, there were one or two impressive moments.
During the visit I was for a night a guest at Lord Haig's advanced
headquarters, and from a little hill above the château in which he
lived, I was able to see the trench-line by night.
During dinner, the guns began to speak loudly, and after dinner I got
one of the Staff to take me to the top of the down above the château to
watch the lights of the battle-line. It was a memorable sight. The
flashes of our guns on one side, and of those of the Germans on the
other, made an almost continuous line of pallid light. Besides, every
minute or two, all along the front, one could see the German or British
magnesium flares illuminating the trench-line. These flares are used as
one uses a bull's-eye on a dark walk. Just as you turn the bull's-eye on
any place which you are not quite sure of, so a flare-light is sent up
when either side suspects evil designs on a particular part of their
trench-line. The effect of the lights was very much like that of a
distant firework display, but the continual roar of the guns gave a
touch of anger and menace which made one realise that one was watching
war and not a Brock's Benefit. The roar of the artillery lasted all
night, and when I woke early in the morning it was still going on. Just
about five o'clock, however, it suddenly stopped, and I realised with a
thumping heart that the Australians and Kents and Surreys were going
over the parapet at Pozières.
At breakfast the Commander-in-Chief showed us a telephone message he had
just received from Pozières, saying that we had carried the piece of
trench which we desired to carry, and had inflicted considerable losses
upon the Germans without suffering too heavily ourselves. We had,
besides, taken several hundred prisoners.
In the course of this visit, I had the good luck to go into the former
German trenches at Notre Dame de Lorette, and also to see some of the
German first-line trenches and dug-outs on the Somme at Fricourt, and
Albert and its hanging statue. But although this was exciting, it was
eclipsed by a visit to Ypres, which I was able to induce my friend, R----,
to manage for me. Ypres just then was not considered a very healthy
spot. I was General Hunter Weston's guest at the Château de Louvet.
I had once before been in Ypres. It was in the course of a bicycle tour
in 1896 or '97, a fact which afforded me some very poignant points of
comparison. The chief thing that is impressed on my memory was a curious
and pathetic little idyll which is thus recorded in my Diary.
We left our car outside the walls, and entered Ypres close to the Menin
Gate, now demolished--where my wife and I entered the town twenty years
ago.
(We bicycled from Lille, where we had gone to see the Lille bust--a
journey which the whole wealth of the world could not now buy one the
right to take.)
I was glad to find that my memory was not in fault, and I recalled
perfectly the great grey-brick walls and the wide moat which in June,
1896, was covered with white waterlilies. There seemed to be none now,
but perhaps "they withered all" when the town died. I should not wonder
if this were so, for shells must certainly have dropped in the moat, and
in so doing must have disturbed them at the very roots. Crossing the
moat by the bridge, we went to the _Place_, once bordered by one of
the greatest and most magnificent examples of civic mediaeval
architecture the world had to show--the Cloth Hall of Ypres. Its walls
now only stand some 20 or 30 feet high. The remains of the towers of the
Cathedral are a little higher, and one of the pinnacles of the Cloth
Hall points like a gaunt grey finger to the sky. I wandered alone into
the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul, which stands to the north of the
_Place_ and is only partially ruined. The façade, a pleasant
example of Louis XIV work, is still standing, and there are also pieces
of the roof intact. One enters by the church or chapel door. I passed
through this, with its desecrated altars and its ruined ecclesiastical
finery, into the sacristies and other rooms behind, including one lofty
room lined entirely with blue-and-white tiles. While there, I heard, to
my surprise, a faint and very distant sound of a sweeping broom. It
echoed through those empty, roofless halls with a weird sound, for at
that moment there was only an occasional growl of artillery in the air.
Everything else was strangely quiet. Needless to say, an uninhabited
town is never noisy, and at five o'clock in the morning it is not merely
not noisy but deadly still. Greatly astonished, I followed the sound
through a long succession of ruined rooms, until I came upon a soldier
with a broom, steadily sweeping the floor of a small empty room a little
off the main sacristy. He had a steel helmet upon his head, like myself.
Slowly and like a man in a dream he plied his work. He looked at me as
if I too were part of the dream, and when I asked him what his regiment
was, he answered with a sort of shadowy salute and in faint, far-away
tones, "The 52nd." I am bound to say I have never been more taken aback
than I was by that answer. It literally left me speechless--a record, my
friends tell me. The strangeness of the whole scene and the silence had
made me prepared for mysteries, but it was a little too much to be told
that _I_ was face to face with a man from one of the most famous of
the Peninsular regiments. It is unnecessary to say that no modern
soldier, asked his regiment, would now give its old numeral. He would
have described himself as belonging to, say, the 2nd Battalion of the
Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. I hastily retreated from this vision of
the past, and recounted my experiences to R----. As much mystified as
myself, he moved with me on the sound of the broom. The man gave him the
same answer as he did to me, and produced the same sense of mystery. But
then there came the prosaic explanation. He belonged, he added, to the
Canadians. His far-away manner was soon accounted for by the fact that
he was a French-speaking Canadian and only very dimly understood my
question. So passed into prose a very pretty piece of mystery! He was no
doubt a Roman Catholic and anxious to do anything he could to keep the
sanctuary clean. From the Grande Place, with its air of Pompeian
melancholy, we passed on to the ramparts. There, I was thrilled to see
the guard being relieved in the dead silence of the dawn by helmet-clad
men. Mounting or relieving guard on these ramparts is no empty pageant,
for at any moment a German shell may drop and obliterate the post....
When we had gone what I judge to be about a mile along the canal, it
being now seven o'clock, we turned off to the left into some fields, in
order to take a path which led to a point in the road where our car had
been sent round to meet us. When we were about half the way across the
fields a shell came over our heads, and we could see it bursting upon
the road almost exactly at the spot where we expected the car to wait.
This was somewhat disconcerting, and R., after the manner of the British
officer, whose first thought in reality as well as in fiction is for his
man, showed a good deal of anxiety lest his chauffeur should have been
in trouble. The shell was not a solitary one, and there was soon another
bursting on our left and another in the air in front of us. Though I
have, in the abstract, no desire for shellfire, even when very mild, I
could not, in a sense, help being glad that I was obliged to get so
excellent a view of what a shell bursting in the air looks like at
fairly close quarters. To be truthful, it looks almost exactly like what
I used to call an absurdly exaggerated picture in the illustrated
newspapers! There was no great danger, but R.--- who was no doubt
slightly anxious about his charge, _i.e._ myself, just as one is
anxious when showing sights to visitors when one is threatened by a
hailstorm,--thought we had better sit down and wait till we saw whether
the shelling was going to stop or possibly develop into something really
unpleasant. Accordingly, we sat down on what had once been a rather neat
piece of sandbag work, something in the nature of what an Irishman might
have called a "built-up dug-out." Though the roof was off, I was glad to
have a feeling of security in the small of my back. It rested against a
double thickness of sandbags. While waiting here I was consoled by my
companion by a story of what an artillery general had said to him under
similar circumstances, i.e. that when one saw the shells not bursting
near enough to do any harm, one was perfectly safe. The only trouble, he
went on, was that "some infernal idiot in the German artillery positions
might go and monkey with the sights." "In that case, there might be a
nasty accident." Happily no interfering idiot in this case monkeyed with
the sights, and very soon the battery which was attending to our part of
the country "ceased fire," and it was soon pronounced safe for us to
resume our walk. Altogether I was much impressed with R.'s complete
indifference. Nothing could have been more reassuring for civilian
nerves. When we emerged on the piece of road where we ought to have
found our car and chauffeur, we were immediately plunged back from the
solemnities of war into the normal picnic situation. Everyone knows how
at a picnic the car is sent round another way, with clear directions to
go to a perfectly familiar spot, a place where the host says he has made
his chauffeur meet him a dozen times before, and to wait there. Yet the
rendezvous when you reach it always turns out to be absolutely vacant
and bereft, not only of the car but of any signs of human life whatever.
No desert looks so forlorn as a place where one expects to meet somebody
and does not meet them. This was exactly our case. Happily there were no
signs of the car having been destroyed, and therefore our anxiety for
the chauffeur's safety was relieved.
To cut a long story short, we wandered about till we found and
commandeered another car, and drove up the main road. There we soon
found the errant car, wailing behind a shed and some trees. It appeared
that the chauffeur had found the rendezvous too hot for him, after two
shells burst not a dozen yards away from the car, and he retreated
therefore to a safe corner, where we found him talking to a fellow-
soldier. He was very properly reprimanded for having moved from the
place where he was told to wait, but all the same I was glad there was
no accident.
During our return journey, we were not worried by bombardment of any
kind, and got back to H. Q. for an excellent breakfast at 8.30. The
morning I spent strolling about the grounds of the château. At luncheon,
R. asked me what I would like to do, and I suggested a visit to the
Belgian inundations. The arrangements required were somewhat elaborate,
but thanks to the good offices of the Belgian _liaison_ officer
attached to the Corps Commander's staff, we got the necessary permits. I
am exceedingly glad to think that we did pay this visit, for it was not
only most picturesque but also most deeply interesting from a military
point of view. The greater part of the Belgian line and the whole of the
part we visited runs parallel to the course of the canalised river Yser,
which empties itself into the sea at Nieuport. To reach it we had to
pass through Furnes, most charming of old Flemish towns, with a
ravishing Grande Place, surrounded by beautiful brick houses, some of
them of the XVth century, some of them dating from the time of the
Spanish occupation, and some again, of the epoch of Louis XIV. As the
Belgian lines are on a dead flat alluvial plain reclaimed from the sea,
it had proved impossible to manage communication-trenches. If they were
dug into the ground they would instantly become full of water. No doubt
they might have been built up with sandbag parapets, but this apparently
was not thought necessary, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the
inundation pushes back the German lines for nearly two miles. We
(_i.e._ the two Belgian officers who accompanied us, R. and myself)
all packed into one motor for this part of the drive, lest two motors
should draw the attention of the enemy's artillery. Also the car was
made to drive very slowly lest it should raise a cloud of dust and so
give us away. We ran up a road parallel to the course of the Yser, and
passed three brick chimneys belonging to a factory which had been much
knocked about by the German artillery fire. One of the chimneys was
pierced by the very neatest shell-hole you ever saw. It went straight
through the shaft of the chimney, in at one side and out at the other,
for all the world like two windows opposite each other. The fabric of
the chimney remained secure. Needless to say, this eye was put into the
needle of the chimney because it had been used as a Belgian observation-
post. We soon got out of our car and walked across the fields to the old
railway embankment, which was now being used as the bank of the
inundation. On the land side of it the ground was marshy, but it was
_terra firma_. On the other side there are two thousand yards of
grey-brown water about three or four feet deep. The inundation was
produced by reversing the process of reclamation. The gates of the Yser
used to be shut against high tides, to prevent the sea-water coming up,
and opened at low tides to let down the land water. Now they are opened
at high tides, so that the tide can rush in and maintain the inundation,
and at low tides they are closed, so that the fresh water of the Yser
can overflow its banks. On the top of the railway bank is a fine series
of sandbag parapets and parados. R., however, pointed out that the
parados is so good as to be really another parapet. Therefore, if the
enemy took those Belgian trenches they would, without any alteration of
the premises, be able to open business on the south side. In the south
face of the railway embankment a number of excellent dug-outs have been
excavated, and strengthened with stone, brickwork, and concrete by the
ingenious Belgian engineers. Those works showed what the world has
always seen in the architecture of the Low Countries, namely, what
wonderful constructors are the Flemings. Building seems to come as
naturally to them as to the Italians, though their staple is brick, not
marble.
Before I leave the subject of the inundations, I ought to say that
across the stretch of muddy water the Belgians hold a good many little
islets and pieces of ground, which, for some reason or other, are a few
feet higher than the rest of the reclaimed plain. Communication with
these is kept, not by boats, but by paths of duck-board which lie across
the flooded lands. The Germans, however, recognise that they have been
completely outwitted by the inundation, and that it is no use to attempt
to attack the Belgians. Accordingly things are very quiet on this line.
It happened, however, that as we walked back across the fields, having
followed the same plan as in the morning of sending our car round to
meet us at a safe place, the Germans chose to throw a few shells, and I
had therefore, when I reached the place of safety, the feeling, good to
the civilian heart, that I had been shelled both before and after
luncheon in one day--though I admit that the shelling was not of a very
serious description. It did, however, justify the steel helmet and the
gas-mask.
I shall end my Idylls of the War with what I hope will not be called a
frivolous note.
At the end of the war, when men had to be taken away even from the
necessary work of agriculture, women, with that surprising capacity for
work of all kinds, which seems to be their privilege, took on every sort
of job and did them all remarkably well. Perhaps the most curious
instance of this is that women at once took up the work of shepherds,
and began to keep their flocks on bleak and lonely Downs; a function,
remember, which no women had performed in England for two or three
hundred years. Here is my account of the first shepherdess I ever saw,
written on October, 1918, and on the day of my encounter.
I had always longed to see a shepherdess, keeping her sheep on the
Downs, and watching them feed, in sober security. I think it was that
desire that made me, when at Oxford, contemplate a learned study of
Elizabethan pastoral plays--a work which, if I remember rightly, never
got beyond a dedication to a damsel who, "perchance to soothe my
youthful dreams," appeared too bright for common life and needed the
crook and the wreath. And now today I saw, as I was riding along the
Pilgrim's Way across the Downs, a shepherdess. Alas! _quantum mutata
ab ilia_. Even when I saw her, a long distance off, leaning on her
crook, I did not desire to:--
"Assume her homely ways and dress,
A shepherd, she a shepherdess."
Still less, when I rode up closer, did I entertain any romantic ideas. I
had not been so fantastic in mind as to expect a war shepherdess to wear
a straw hat in December, wreathed with roses and forget-me-nots, or a
mixture of all the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn, as is the wear
of the pastoral Muse. Again, I did not look for a "Rogue in porcelain,"
with gold buckles on neat black shoes, and highly ornamented stays worn
outside her gown. A stalwart young woman, in a khaki smock and sou'-
wester, Bedford-cord breeches, and long leather boots, would have
satisfied my utmost demands in 1918. Instead, however, my shepherdess
was dressed, if her clothes could be called dress, like a female tramp.
Long draggle-tailed skirts, some sort of a shawl, and the most appalling
old cloth cap on her head, concealing a small quantity of grey hairs and
shading a wrinkled, aged face! It was a bitter disappointment. She would
have done far better for a Norn or one of the Weird Sisters. Yet, when I
stopped my horse to talk to her--I had not forgotten that "the courtesy
of shepherds" demands that one should always exchange words with the
folk of the lonely trade--I found myself unconsciously dropping into the
language of pastoral verse. Does not the Third Eclogue of Virgil begin:
"Die mihi, ... ? An Melibei?"
At any rate, I began: "Whose flock is this?" She answered as if out of
the book: "It's Farmer Black's. First the one-armed shepherd had it. Now
I've got it," and her eyes looked lovingly on as fine a flock of ewes as
you could wish to see. They were spread fanwise along the opposite side
of the sharply-defined chalk valley. She went on to tell me that she had
also got the lamb flock, but not with her that day. I asked how she had
come to take up pastoral work, thinking that probably she was the widow
of a shepherd. But it seemed that she had never done shepherd's work
before, though, as she said, she had "been brought up among them."
"Them" was obviously the ewes and lambs. One could see that she was
thoroughly competent, and that while she was in charge there would be no
straying or stealing, or over-feeding, or starving, or any other ill.
Then we talked of her dog, who sat by her, vigilant and confident, ready
at her slightest word or nod to race round his charges. Yes, he was a
good dog now, but when she had him first he was wicked. "He was that
spiteful, you dursn't trust him." The one-armed shepherd had "used him
cruel," and made him savage with the sheep. Now at last she had got him
quite right again, and she looked down lovingly upon the dog--a bob-
tail of the South Down breed--who sat at attention by her side. But, she
ended, the work was very hard, and the weather getting too cold for her
to be up on the Downs much longer. She would have to give it up for this
winter.
I wished her good luck and cantered off, a disillusioned man. But as I
turned my heard for one more glimpse of my one and only shepherdess, I
saw the dog looking up with the utmost faith and affection into her
poor, kindly, weazened old face. I could not wish her other than she
was. I could well believe that the farmer was satisfied with her, and
hardly regretted that she had not thought it worth while to dress the
part with a little more attention. Perhaps in the time to come we shall
develop a real race of shepherdesses,
"Who without sadness shall be safe,
And gay without frivolity."
If we do, I think they are pretty sure, whether young or old, to tie
bunches of wild flowers to their crooks. But, after all, for a war
shepherdess, garments such as my Downland Amoret had on were more
appropriate. Anyway, the brave old thing was doing her war-work
sturdily. She shivered, I am sure, for service not for hire. All honour
to her and the thousands of women who did as she did!
CHAPTER XXIV
FIVE GREAT MEN
There are five men,--three of them close friends and the others good
friends and men for whom I felt a warm admiration,--who stand out as
prominent influences in my life. In the first group I put Lord Cromer,
Colonel John Hay, and Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. They were men with whom I
was, I think, in sympathy on every point in regard to the conduct of
political life and to the spirit in which it should be carried on. The
other two were Joseph Chamberlain and the Duke of Devonshire. Mr.
Chamberlain I knew intimately and esteemed highly, having always a
sincere admiration for him even when we differed most in politics. In
regard to the other, the late Duke of Devonshire, I may say that
although I was on much less intimate terms with him than with Mr.
Chamberlain, I never felt any political difference, except in the matter
of speed of action. Yet even when one was most impatient with the Duke's
slowness in uptake, one often admired him most and felt at the back of
one's mind that he was most in the right.
In selecting these five men from among my friends I must remind people
that this does not show that they were my only close and intimate
friends in public life. There were plenty of others, but I am thankful
to say I am prevented from mentioning most of them because of my rule
not to write of the living. Indeed, I have been so fortunate in my
friends that but for this rule I could fill not a single volume but a
series of vast tomes.
In moments of mental elation I had planned to direct my executors to
place upon the tablet which will be fixed to the wall of the Strachey
Chapel in Chew Magna Church, nothing but the words: "His friends were
many and true-hearted." I admit that this is a piece of self-laudation
that a man could hardly be justified in bestowing upon himself. If you
can read their "history in a people's eyes," you can certainly best read
a man's history by asking who were his friends and how did they treat
him and feel towards him. Till lately, however, I have felt a difficulty
in the matter, for, to tell the truth, these deeply moving words came in
the first place not from some classical writer but from that nautical
ditty, "Tom Bowling." They are the work of that amazing British Tyrteus
Dibdin,--the broken-down poet actor who drew an annual salary from the
Admiralty for maintaining the spirit of the British Navy through his
songs! ["_We 'ires a poet for ourselves_" was, according to Byron,
the boast of Mr. Rowland of oily fame. The Admiralty could make a
similar claim.]
I felt that it would be rather much to ask one's executor to get a
country vicar to pass a line of a nautical ditty for insertion in a
church. If, in verifying the quotation, the parson should be arrested by
the neighbouring line, "_His Poll was kind and true_," what then?
There is no harm in the poem as a whole but somehow it has not quite the
monumental air about it. Lately, however, I discovered to my great
satisfaction and not a little to my amusement that, as so often happens,
one of the Greeks of the great age had been before Dibdin. In that
enchanting dialogue, "The Symposium" of Xenophon, Hermogenes is asked by
one of the persons of the dialogue: "On what do you plume yourself most
highly?" "_On the virtue and the power of my friends_," he
answered, "_and that being what they are, they care for me_." I
feel now that when the time comes, my complimentary self-determination
may be shrouded in the veil of a learned language, and if the words,
"His friends were many and true-hearted" are added in the vernacular
they will pass with men of Hellenic culture as an allowable example of a
free translation.
It will also have a certain support from one of the tablets with which
my tablet will be colleague, the tablet that commemorates the first Sir
Henry Strachey, the Secretary of Clive and a man who was for forty years
and more a Member of the House of Commons. This epitaph has not the
usual flowery pomposity that one would expect to find in the case of a
man of his age and occupation and position. It is reticent, if
conventional. One phrase, however, stands out. Henry Strachey is
described as "_an active friend_." That is much too great praise
for a man to claim for himself, but there is nothing that I should like
better than to be able to think when I boasted that my friends, like the
friends of Hermogenes, were many and cared for me, that I had helped to
make them so because in a world so full of passive friends I had at any
rate tried to be active.
* * * * *
I must begin with Lord Cromer, for I had a regard for him, and for his
wise and stimulating advice, which touches the point of veneration. He
was seldom out of my thoughts. He was in the habit of consulting me
freely in regard to public events and on other great matters, and we
either met and talked or else wrote to each other almost daily. I was a
much younger man than he, and I had not, as he had, come into personal
contact with the problems of practical administration at first hand, but
had been accustomed to see them and deal with them rather as
abstractions. It is true that the questions on which my opinion had to
be expressed in _The Spectator_ were often of vital importance and
that I had to advise my readers thereon. Still, I was never myself an
executant. I was, indeed, rather like the type of laboratory doctor who
has of late come into being. He does not himself come into contact with
the patient though he is asked to investigate special points. His
opinion may have great weight and influence, but he does not carry out
the physical cure of the patient.
Many of Lord Cromer's oldest and most intimate friends may perhaps be
surprised to hear that Lord Cromer consulted me so often and on so many
points. If so, I shall not be astonished at their astonishment. It would
be most natural in the case of a man so self-reliant, so able to judge
and balance things for himself--so little liable to be carried away by
personal feelings, as Lord Cromer. Yet, it is true The reason was, I
think, that Lord Cromer found with me, as I found with him, that in
response to, or in reaction from any particular series of events we
almost always found ourselves _ad idem_. We wanted the same good
causes to win, and we wanted to frustrate the same evil projects. In
public affairs, we agreed not only as to what was injurious and as to
what was sound, but, which is far more important, we agreed as to what
was _possible_.
In economic matters, both in theory and practice, we moved on exactly
the same lines. Once or twice, when I most sincerely thought that I was
differing from Lord Cromer and told him so, because I felt I might seem
to be shifting my ground,--or rather, looking at things from a different
angle,--I found that an exactly similar process had gone on in his mind.
As so often happens with a friendship of this kind, I foretold in my own
mind almost from the first moment I saw him, the kind of tie that was
going to unite us. I had not spent half an hour in his company before I
realized that I had at last found a man dealing with great affairs in a
great way,--not only a man who satisfied me absolutely in theory, but a
man with whom I could act unreservedly because his mind was tuned to the
same pitch as mine.
I well remember the day and the hour of our meeting. Always deeply
interested in Imperial questions, and especially in the Egyptian
problem, I determined, in the year 1896, to pay a visit to Egypt. Like
most young men of my day, I admired Lord Cromer and his work, but I had
no special cult for him. Naturally, however, I took out letters of
introduction, for until the end of his occupation of the post of Consul
General, he was "Egypt." One of these was from my chief, Mr. Hutton, one
from my uncle, Sir Richard Strachey, and another, if I remember rightly,
from another uncle, Sir John Strachey; the two uncles had been
colleagues of Lord Cromer's on the Indian Council. Directly I arrived in
Cairo, I left my card and my letters of introduction in the usual way,
and expected, after a decent delay, to be asked to pay a semiofficial
visit at the Agency. Instead, Lord Cromer acted with his characteristic
promptitude. Early on the morning of the day after I had left my letters
of introduction and my own and my wife's cards, there came one of the
beautifully dressed Syces from the Agency with an invitation to lunch
with the Cromers that day. We went and to our great delight found them
alone. Therefore, I was able at once to get _en rapport_ with my
friend that was to be. I had not finished luncheon before we had plunged
into the whole Egyptian question and had got to my own cherished point,
one connected with the French occupation of Tunis, their promises of
evacuation, and so forth. This, my first experience of I do not know how
many hundred talks with Lord Cromer, was exactly like the last. In the
art of unfolding his mind and his subject he was a master. I questioned
and he answered, and I remember distinctly feeling that I had never
before put myself so easily _en rapport_ with any man. I had been
told that he was gruff, nay, grumpy, and quite without any of the arts
of the diplomatist, and that I should find him very different from the
statesmen and politicians to whom I was accustomed. Instead, I found him
plain and straightforward, but as kind as he was quick.
After luncheon, we had a very long talk which was at last interrupted by
Lord Cromer having to go out to open something or to see somebody. As I
was saying good-bye he suddenly said: "I suppose you can keep a secret?"
I made a suitable reply, and added I had a lock to my portmanteau. With
his quick step he was at the side of his bureau in a moment. Unlocking a
drawer, he thrust into my hand a white paper. "That," he said, "is a
memorandum which I wrote the other day for Lord Salisbury, giving a
character of the Khedive and of all the chief Egyptian statesmen. It
wouldn't do to lose it, and there are, I suppose, agents of the Khedive
who might possibly look out for papers in your rooms if they heard you
had been seeing me." He said this rather apologetically, for he hated
anything sensational or melodramatic like the true Whig he was. He added
however: "I think it would be better when you are not reading it if you
kept it in your portmanteau. Don't trouble to return it till you have
read it thoroughly. I think it will amuse you."
I was touched at the moment, but when I got back to my hotel and saw the
nature of the document I felt pleased beyond words. I did not, of
course, imagine that Lord Cromer would suspect me of wanting to betray
his secrets, but considering the place, the Agent General's position,
and the fact that he was then at the height of his quarrel with the
Khedive and on the most delicate terms with half the men mentioned in
the document, I felt that he had reposed a confidence in me which most
people would have thought only justified in the case of a man they had
known for years, a man who, they were sure, would not cackle about a
subject of which he was naturally, as I was, quite ignorant. No doubt he
knew there was no peril of my publishing anything, but if I had left
these perfectly plain-spoken _dossiers_ of all the big men in Cairo
about in the hotel, the result might have been catastrophic. This
exhibition of confidence was characteristic of Cromer. If he trusted
you, he trusted you altogether. Though he indulged in no nonsense about
being able to tell in a moment whether a man was trustworthy or not, and
did not often act upon impulse, he was quite capable of doing so on
occasion.
In itself the document was exceedingly brilliant and just the piece of
work which a busy Prime Minister like Lord Salisbury would greatly
value. It put him _au fait_ with the exact position of the various
players in the great game of intrigue which was always going on, and
with the plots and counter plots made in the Khedive's Palace or in the
houses of the various Pashas. They spent most of their time in those
days in trying to trip up the Agency.
Lord Cromer not only exposed the motives of the men with whom he was
dealing; he often gave the just apologies for these motives. But he did
more than this. Without being unduly literary or rhetorical he gave
lively characters of the men described. What fascinated me about these
analyses of character, however, was that though they were like the best
literature, you felt that Cromer had never let himself be betrayed into
an epigram, a telling stroke, or a melodramatic shadow in order to
heighten the literary effect. The document was a real State Paper, and
not a piece of imitation Tacitus or Saint Simon.
I found myself greatly admiring and even touched with envy. I wondered
whether, in similar circumstances, I should have been able to resist the
temptation to be Tacitean. One felt instinctively that Lord Salisbury
must have been grateful to have such an instrument for dealing with a
situation so delicate and so intricate and placing so great a
responsibility on the man in charge.
During my stay in Cairo, my intimacy with Lord Cromer deepened from day
to day. We talked and talked, and from every talk I gained not only
knowledge of the East, but knowledge on a thousand points of practical
and also theoretical politics. Cromer, like so many Imperial
administrators before him, was an exceedingly well-read man, in modern
and ancient history, in Economics, and in political theory. Above all,
he was a devotee of Memoirs and he was always able to reinforce an
argument with "Don't you remember what ... said about that." I may say
frankly that the great delight to me was the delight of confirmation.
Inexperienced as I then was in public affairs, it was a matter of no
small pleasure and of no small amount of pride to find my own special
opinions, views, and theories as to political action plainly endorsed.
In not a single case was I disappointed or disillusioned either with
what had been my own views or with what were Lord Cromer's. I soon saw,
as I am sure did he, that we were capable of a real intellectual
alliance; and so our friendship was made.
Considering the reputation that Lord Cromer had for masterfulness and
for something approaching disregard of other people's feelings when he
thought them foolish or in the wrong; for the irritability of extreme
energy; or again for a fierce impatience with anyone who opposed his
views, my experience surprised me not a little. I did not find a trace
of these things in my intercourse with him, and this in spite of the
fact that knowing what to expect in this way, I was keenly on the
lookout. Moreover I was, with all a young man's prickliness, quite
determined that I would not be treated as I was told Cromer was apt to
treat people. But I seldom if ever found myself in disagreement with him
on the merits and never as to manner of action. No doubt we were as a
rule concerned with matters where I did not know the facts and he did.
Neither of us could, of course, differ as to conclusions when once the
facts were agreed on. Each had his little inch measure of logic and both
measures were scaled alike. Still, in intercourse so constant as that
between us in letters and in talk, it is, I must confess, extraordinary
that he and I never really differed and that this was certainly not due
to either of us being prepared to give way upon essentials.
If anyone thinks that I occupied what the XVIIIth century people were
wont to call the spaniel position to Lord Cromer, they are mistaken. He
never attempted to bully me out of an opinion or even out of a
prejudice. If, indeed, I had been a self-conscious man, I might have
been a little worried by the fact that when I told him of some line that
I had taken or was going to take in _The Spectator_, he would
almost always say, with his cheerful and eager self-confidence: "You are
perfectly right: of course, that's the line to take"; and so forth.
It was indeed, sometimes a subject of chaff in my family when Cromer was
staying with us at Newlands that he would begin ten or twelve sentences
in the course of a Saturday to Monday visit with: "Strachey, you and I
have been absolutely right from beginning to end." And so I believe we
were, though it may seem strange that I should have the hardihood to
record it "between boards."
In view of Cromer's alleged testiness, I may record a very striking
"contraindication." During the year and a half or nearly two years in
which he wrote a review every week in _The Spectator_ on some
important book, I never had any difficulties with him whatever. He was,
with the possible exception of my cousin, Lytton Strachey, the best
reviewer I ever had. He not only took an immense amount of trouble with
his reviews from his own point of view, but he also took immense trouble
to realise and understand _The Spectator_ view and to commit me to
nothing which he thought I might dislike. It happened, however, that on
one occasion I did have to use the editorial blue pencil and alter
something, or at any rate get him to alter it. At first he seemed a
little fussy about my objection, but when I was firm and explained my
reasons he agreed, and in the end, with that attractive frankness that
always went side by side with any testiness, he said that on reflection
he thought I was perfectly right.
In this context I ought also to record that so clever a reviewer was he
and so reasonable were all his views, that it was not only difficult but
almost impossible to catch him out, I will not say in a mistake in
facts, for in these he was always accurate, but in an over-statement or
an under-statement.
A full balanced judgment of Lord Cromer and his work for the country and
the Empire is one which cannot be framed now. Again, I am not the man to
frame it, for I admit that I loved the man too much to make a judicial
estimate by me possible. Still, I want to say something of his character
and his achievement. He stood for so much that is good in our national
activities, and his example and inspiration are of such value, that I
desire almost beyond anything else in politics to make people understand
his point of view; and specially in what pertains to the Government of
the Eastern races. In such questions the British people will, I am
confident, find his principles the safest of guides.
I realise that Lord Cromer is now in the blind spot of politics. Sooner
or later, however, there will be a revival in interest in this great
man. People will begin to ask what it was that made his fame with his
contemporaries so great. To such questions I shall venture to anticipate
the answer.
The British people may be stupid, but they know a man when they see him.
That is why they honoured Lord Cromer, yet I doubt if even one per cent.
of the nation could have given true and sufficient reasons for the
belief that was in them. It was certainly not because he had added, in
fact if not in name, a great province to the British Empire. Plenty of
countries richer and greater have been drawn within the magic circle of
the _Pax Britannica_ without the men who accomplished the task
having received anything approaching the recognition accorded to Lord
Cromer. Again, it was not Lord Cromer's administrative skill that won
him his fame, great though that skill was. In India and in East and West
Africa we have had examples of successful development by great officials
that have passed almost unnoticed. Lord Cromer's financial ability, or
shall I say financial judgment? for he himself was the last man to
profess any special and personal knowledge of figures, was doubtless
very great; but most of his countrymen were quite incapable of gauging
its scope, or of understanding what he had done to produce order out of
chaos, or how he had turned a bankrupt country into a solvent one.
Deftness, no matter how great, in the placing of a loan, or in evolving
financial freedom out of the mass of hostile checks and balances sought
to be set up by the Powers in Egypt, would by itself have entirely
failed to win him the acclamations which greeted him when he retired
from active duty. Even his work as a diplomatist, though so supremely
skilful, was never properly understood at home. There was a vague notion
that he had played a lone hand against all the Powers and had won out,
but success here could not possibly have obtained for Lord Cromer that
unbounded confidence which was shown him by the nation.
The respect and veneration which the British public felt for Lord Cromer
would, if his health had permitted, have called him to power at the
moment of worst crisis in the war; yet those who called him could not
have said why they felt sure he would prove the organizer of victory.
They were content to believe that it was so.
What was the quality that placed Lord Cromer so high in the regard of
his fellow-countrymen throughout Britain and the Empire? What was it
that made him universally respected,--as much by soldiers as by
civilians, by officials as by Members of Parliament, by Whigs as by
Radicals, by Socialists as by Individualists? The answer is to be found
in the spirit in which Lord Cromer did his work. What raised him above
the rank-and-file of our public men was his obedience to a very plain
and obvious rule. It was this: _to govern always in the interests of
the governed_. This sounds a trite and elementary proposition, and
yet the path it marks out is often a very difficult one to follow. It
may be straight, but it is so narrow that only the well-balanced man can
avoid stepping off either to the right or to the left. It is always a
plank across a stream; sometimes it may be compared to a spear resting
on the rocks in a raging torrent.
There are a hundred temptations, many of them by no means ignoble, to
divert the Imperial administrator from keeping the narrow path exactly.
In certain circumstances it may seem a positive virtue to exploit some
province of the Empire for the Mother Country, or for the Empire as a
whole--to forget the interests of the governed in the interests of the
great organism of which that province forms only a part. Plentiful are
the arguments for leaning a little to the one side or to the other. Yet
if these were listened to, on the ground of the interests of the Empire
as a whole (it must be admitted that the temptation to think of the
interests of the people of these islands is one which has been steadily
resisted by all our great Proconsuls) they might bring disaster in their
train.
Strange as it may seem, nothing has proved a better or surer foundation
of Empire, or has more helped even its material development, than the
determination not to take advantage of the absolute power of the Mother
Country over the Dependencies and subject States, but, on the contrary,
to develop these as a sacred trust. We rightly asked for, and we took,
far more help from the Daughter Nations during the war than from the
Dependencies, for the very good reason that the Daughter Nations were
their own mistresses and could do what they liked. They stood on an
equality with us. In the case of the Dependencies, we are Trustees, and
no temptation whatever, either for ourselves or for others, would allow
us to budge one inch from the straight path.
Here, Lord Cromer was at his very strongest. He was an ideal Trustee.
And what made this evident was the fact that he talked comparatively
little about his trust, and never behaved in regard to it as a pedant or
a prig. As long as the principle was firmly maintained, he bothered
himself very little about matters of appearance.
If Lord Cromer kept the path successfully in this respect, he kept it
equally well in regard to another temptation. The weak administrator is
always liable to govern, not in the true interests of the governed, but
in what the governed think is their interest--to do what they actually
desire rather than what they would desire if they were better judges.
Weak governors, that is, act as if they were servants and not trustees.
To play the part of an obedient servant is right and necessary here, for
we are over age, have no need of trustees, and govern ourselves. It is
wrong when you stand in _loco parentis_ to those whose affairs you
administer. We all know what is the kind of government that an Eastern
people establishes for itself. In spite of the suffering that it
inflicts upon the people, there is good evidence to show that, judged by
the test of popularity, the governed in the East prefer arbitrary
personal rule to just and efficient constitutional government. In the
same way a child will tell you, and honestly tell you, that he prefers
raspberry-jam and heavy pastry at odd times to regular meals of brown
bread and butter, and that he is quite willing, in the interests of the
pastry system of nourishment, to brave the pains which Mary experienced
when she consumed both jam and pastry. The wise guardian does not,
however, in view of such statement, conclude that it is his or her duty
to let the child have whatever he likes.
In the same way, Lord Cromer, though perfectly willing to admit that in
a truly self-governing State it is the duty of the administrator either
to resign or to carry out the will of his masters, the people, he would
make no such admission in the case of an Oriental country. Yet this did
not, as might be supposed, lead to a cold, harsh, or metallic system of
government. Lord Cromer had far too much wisdom and moderation, was far
too much of a Whig, as he himself would have said, to push to extremes
the view that a native must have what was good for him, and not what he
asked for at the top of his voice.
In small matters, indeed in all non-essentials, Lord Cromer strove of
course to give the native what he wanted, and strove still more to
refrain from forcing on him, because it was for his good, what he did
not want. Lord Cromer was never tired of quoting what, in Bacon's
phrase, he would call "luciferous" stories, to illustrate the folly of
the administrator who thrusts physical improvements or the devices of
European enlightenment upon the unwilling Oriental solely because they
are good _per se_, or economical, or will make the governed richer
or cleverer or happier. One of the stories of which Lord Cromer was
particularly fond was that of the young Indian civilian who on his first
day in a new district, and when he was entirely unknown, took a walk in
the fields and saw an elderly ryot ploughing the land. Being good at the
vernacular and full of zeal, the district officer asked how things were
in that part of the country. The old man, like all tillers of the soil,
replied with a kind of gloomy complacency that things were undoubtedly
very bad, but that they might be worse. Anyway the only thing to do was
to go on cultivating the land. "This year it is the cattle plague. Last
year it was the Agricultural College. But since they are both the will
of God, both must be borne without complaint." That story the present
writer remembers Lord Cromer telling him on his return from the opening
of a model farm or some such agricultural improvement. Such improvements
ought, no doubt, as Lord Cromer said, to make the task of the fellaheen
much easier, but nevertheless it was certain that the majority would
regard them as pure evil--mere oppressions by wayward if not demented
tyrants.
They wanted to be left alone, not taught how to get another fifteen per
cent, of produce out of the land. Knowing this, Lord Cromer harried the
native as little as possible. He was fond indeed of saying that there
was very little you could do to make an Oriental people grateful.--"Why
should they be grateful?" he would interject.--There was, however, one
thing which they could and did appreciate, and that was low taxation. It
was no good to say to the Oriental: "It is true you pay higher taxation,
but then look at the benefits you get for it--the road up to the door of
your house which enables you to save immensely in transport, the light
railway not far off, the increased water for irrigation, a school for
your children, and so forth and so on." To all these benefits the
Oriental taxpayer is totally indifferent, or at all events he refuses to
see any connection between them and the taxes paid. They come or do not
come, like the rain from Heaven. All he is certain about is that the
tax-collector is asking him double what he used to ask. So much for
local improvements!
In fine, Lord Cromer, though he kept his rule to govern in the interests
of the governed so strictly and was so exact a trustee, was always
human--never pedantic, professorial, or academic, in the carrying out of
his rule. He was above all things, a just man, and he realised that
justice was not true justice unless it were humanised by knowledge and
the sympathy of comprehension. Yet he knew and understood the benefits
of strong government, though he always tried so to harness his
administration that the straps would gall as little as possible. That is
why he won to such a strange degree the trust and admiration, I had
almost said the love, of the Egyptian people. Peasant men and women who
had never seen him, and who had the dimmest and vaguest idea of what he
was and what he stood for, yet felt an unbounded belief in his desire
that they should be justly treated. There is a well-known story which
exactly illustrates the point I am making.
A young English officer engaged in sanitary work in the Delta pointed
out to a well-to-do farmer's wife in a cholera year that she was running
terrible risks by having her cesspool quite close to the door of her
house, and so placed that it was contaminating all the drinking-water
used by her and her family. At last after many ineffectual remonstrances
he ordered the removal of this sure and certain road to death by
cholera. The woman was furious, and ended up a battle royal by telling
him that though for the moment he could oppress the poor and triumph
over the Godly, it would not be for long. "The man Krahmer" in Cairo
would see her righted. She would appeal to him and he would protect her.
Lord Cromer felt, and felt rightly, that this invocation was his best
epitaph. Appeals, no matter how strange, were never frowned down by him
but encouraged. However ill-founded, they taught something. They were
often of an intimate character and couched in the wonderful language of
the Babu, for Egypt has its Babus as well as Bengal. One complaint which
had to do with an irrigation dispute began as follows: "Oh, hell!
Lordship's face grow red with rage when he hears too beastly conduct of
Public Works Department."
Macaulay's splendid eulogy of Hampden may, with very little alteration,
be applied to Lord Cromer. "The sobriety, the self-command, the perfect
soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention," were as
truly the qualities of the Ruler and regenerator of Egypt as they were
of the great statesman of the Rebellion--the man who fought so nobly
against the sullen tyranny of Charles and Laud.
For Joseph Chamberlain, I felt a very real and very warm affection as a
man. Unfortunately for me, however, I was, except in the matter of Home
Rule, out of sympathy with most of his later political principles, or,
at any rate, his political standpoint. Mr. Chamberlain, though in no
sense a man of extreme, wild, or immoderate views, was in no sense a
Whig. To tread the narrow, uphill, and rather stony path of the _via
media_, fretted him. He liked large enterprises and large ways of
carrying them out, and, though it would be a great mistake to call him
imprudent, he was distinctly a man of daring imagination in politics. He
liked to prophesy and to help fulfil his prophecies. He was not content
to wait and watch things grow. He was, indeed, one of the political
gardeners who thoroughly enjoy the forcing-house. If he had been a
grower of vegetables instead of Orchids, he would have dealt, I feel
sure, almost entirely in "_primeurs_."
I can think of no man who used the imaginative faculty more in politics
than he did, except Disraeli, and here, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain had the
advantage. Disraeli was apt to let his imagination run so wild as to
become vulgar, pompous, and ostentatious, whereas Mr. Chamberlain always
kept his visionary schemes within the due bounds of seriousness and
reason. Though I think he placed no limits to the capacity of the
English people to meet and to overcome dangers and difficulties in the
world of politics, and always held them, as, indeed, do I, capable to be
of heroic mould, he never inflated himself or his countrymen on any
subject, but spoke always weightily and with good sense. To take a
concrete example, he, no more than Lord Cromer, would have intoxicated
his mind with a fantastic idea like that of the Cape to Cairo railway as
did Mr. Rhodes. That was at its best only a symbol and at worst the
caprice of an Imperial egoist. Though Mr. Chamberlain had gained from
his training and business success some of the best qualities of the
statesman, that is, confidence in himself, and his sound practical
sense, he was not, as I think his greatest admirers would agree, a deep
political thinker.
He was, however, a great orator and a great parliamentary advocate, and,
if properly briefed, there was no man who could state a case better or
more persuasively than he did. This gift of advocacy, though an advocacy
quite untouched by cynicism, was apt to raise doubts in the public mind
as to his sincerity,--doubts which were due to ignorance of the man and
to nothing else. It is true that he argued as the most convinced and
most happy exponent of Free Trade during the first half of his political
life and later as a convinced Protectionist. Yet I am certain that on
both occasions he was perfectly sincere. In each case, though he did not
realise it, he was speaking from a brief, but from a brief that for the
time had thoroughly converted him and made him think of the policy
advocated in the spirit of a missionary.
Mr. Chamberlain was a man of whom the nation was proud, and had a right
to be proud. He was a good fighter and an unwearied worker, and he spent
himself ungrudgingly in the service of his country. Above all things, he
had that quality of vigour and daring which endears itself, and always
will endear itself, to a virile race. He was not for ever counting the
cost of his actions, but would as gaily as any hero of romance throw his
cap over the wall and follow it without a thought of the difficulties
and dangers that might confront him on the other side.
No one has ever asserted that Mr. Chamberlain left his comrades in the
lurch, failed to support a friend in a tight place, or accepted help
from others and then was careless about helping them in return or making
them acknowledgment for what they had done. Remember that it is very
rare in the case of a public man to find so total an absence of the
complaint of ingratitude. The accusation of ingratitude, indeed, may be
well described as the commonest of all those brought against the great
by the small. "He was willing enough to take help from me when he needed
it; now he has raised himself, the humble ladder is kicked down or else
its existence is utterly ignored."--"While we were unknown men we worked
together shoulder to shoulder and helped each other. When he grew big
and strong, he forgot the colleagues of his early days, ignored their
past services, and humiliated them with the cold eye of forgetfulness."--
"I soon saw that, if he had not actually forgotten me, he would very
much rather not be asked to remember me."--"It was evidently a bore to
him to talk of old days, or to be reminded that even his prowess and
strength had once been glad of 'a back up.'"--"He liked to think that he
owed it all to himself and to no one else." These are the kind of
criticisms that most winners in the Political Stakes have to bear. Such
criticisms, very likely unfair in themselves, were, for example,
constantly made in regard to Mr. Gladstone. But though my recollection
carries me back to very nearly the beginning of Mr. Chamberlain's active
career, I cannot recall a single instance of such grumbling, either in
private or public, in regard to Mr. Chamberlain. On the contrary, the
world of politics is filled with men who gratefully remember that,
though their work for Mr. Chamberlain may have been humble in appearance
or in fact, he never forgot the helping hand and the loyal service, but
repaid them a hundredfold.
That genius for friendship of which Lord Morley once spoke, extended far
beyond the ordinary limits of friendship. Mr. Chamberlain not only never
forgot a friend, but never forgot any loyal or honest helper, and, what
from the helper's point of view is equally important, never forgot also
that it is not enough merely to remember the helper. You must try to
help him in return.
This unwillingness to forget support, this instinct towards repayment of
loyal service, was no piece of cynical calculation, no acting on the
maxim that the way to get men to serve you well and support you is to
make it clear to them that you always pay your debts with full interest.
That Mr. Chamberlain was proud of the fact that no man could call him
ungrateful I do not doubt; but I am sure also that his action was due to
the impulse of a generous nature and to no sordid calculation.
He was a natural chieftain. He expected obedience and loyalty in the men
who enlisted under his banner, but he felt in every corner of his being
that it was the duty of the chieftain to succour, to help, and to
advance those who stood by him. No labour and no self-sacrifice was too
great to help a member of the clan he had constituted, and it was given
quite as readily to the man who was never likely to be able to help
again as to him from whom future favours might be expected.
This quality of gratitude and devotion may not be the greatest of moral
qualities, but it is certainly one of the most attractive--a quality
which will always secure a love and veneration similar to that with
which Mr. Chamberlain was regarded, not only by his own people, but
throughout the country. Cool and pedantic political philosophers may
think that he carried the backing of his friends too far, but it was a
generous fault and not likely to be resented in the workaday world. The
man who has the instinct for comradeship will "bring home hearts by
dozens" when the virtuous and well-balanced awarder of the good-conduct
prizes in life's school will leave his fellows cold.
Because I have dwelt on this side of Mr. Chamberlain's character, it
must not be supposed that I have forgotten, or that I desire to
minimize, the splendid public services done by him, first in the region
of municipal life--a priceless contribution--then in national politics,
and last of all in the wider Imperial sphere. In every part of our
public life he lit a torch which will not be extinguished. Men differ,
and will continue to differ, as to his policy. None will differ as to
the spirit in which he acted, or deny that he gave what nations most
need--the stimulus of high endeavour.
However, I do not want to speak too much of his politics, partly because
my aim is to be uncontroversial, and still more because his personal
character is far more likely to interest my readers than any diagnosis
of the politician.
The qualities of heart and head, which I have described, were not
learned by me through Mr. Chamberlain's public form, but through a close
study at first hand. From the year 1887 or '88 till the Tariff Reform
controversy, I was on very intimate terms, social as well as political,
with Mr. Chamberlain. I think he was fond of me. I know I was fond of
him. I expect he thought I was a little too cool, or, as he might have
said, not keen enough, just as I thought him inclined to be too zealous
a partisan,--too ready to push party conditions to the uttermost. Yet
both of us, and that is after all the great thing in friendship, felt
the sense of personal attraction.
He was among other things one of the most delightful of companions. To
see him, as I so often did, in his house in the country set at the edge
of a great city,--that best describes Highbury,--was a delightful
experience. The house-parties at the Whitsuntide and Easter recesses,
which lasted double the length of ordinary Saturday to Monday parties,
were most attractive. Chamberlain was an expert at asking the right
people to meet each other, but if he had not been it would not have
mattered. Owing to his vigour of mind and the stimulating character of
his talk he would have turned a house-party of the purest "duds" into a
success. As a matter of fact, however, he was the last man to endure
bores. People who were asked to Highbury, were asked because he liked
them, not for any conventional reasons.
Another factor which made these visits to Birmingham delightful was the
hostess. Mrs. Chamberlain had as high social qualities as the host. But
I must not speak of Mrs. Chamberlain as I feel, for to do so would break
the rule of not writing about living people. I will say, however, that
even an interval of a quarter of a century--the date in her case sounds
utterly preposterous I admit--has not dimmed my recollection of a
fascinating and gracious young woman. New to England, new to our
politics, and plunged into the midst of a party crisis of a very bitter
kind, she showed an unfailing instinct as a hostess. She never said an
unkind thing or made an enemy. Besides her youth, her good-looks, and
her charm of manner and her natural dignity she possessed the gift of
making parties go. Though she always made herself felt in her parties,
she was never formidable. She was always friendly and yet never gushing
or affected. But I most sincerely ask Mrs. Chamberlain's pardon for I
cannot conceal from myself that she will not like to be written about in
terms of eulogy.
Mr. Chamberlain was indeed singularly fortunate in his family as
supporters in the matter of entertaining. His two sons, Austen and
Neville, evidently enjoyed the house-parties as much as did their father
and his guests. Both inherited a liking for good company. Therefore,
whether one went in the evening to the big or the little smoking-room
one was sure of good talk.
Highbury was a house thoroughly well designed for entertainments, and
the large gardens, or small park, whichever you like to call it, which
surrounded the house, afforded plenty of sitting-out room. No one who
shared in the parties will ever forget the long and good talks on the
lawn on which the wicker chairs were set with brightly coloured rugs for
the sitter's feet. Guests worthy of that honour were taken through the
orchid house by Mr. Chamberlain himself, for his knowledge and love of
his favourite flower was no pose, but a reality.
This absence of "pose" was, by the way, one of the most striking things
about Mr. Chamberlain. He was an extraordinarily natural man. You cannot
possibly imagine his taking up anything, from a new kind of cigar, a new
form of hat, or a new type of novel, because he was told it was the
right thing to do, or because he thought it was expedient for a
politician with a future to encourage this or that fashionable craze. I
have compared him to Disraeli in the matter of imagination. In the
absence of "pose" he was, however, the exact opposite of Disraeli. For
example, Lord Beaconsfield praised Lord Bolingbroke and talked about
Lord Carteret, not because he really liked either of the statesmen
mentioned, but because he thought it sounded well, and also because it
amused him to look more learned historically than he was. You could no
more expect Mr. Chamberlain to do that than to wear a particular flower,
not because he liked it, but because it had been admired by say Mr. Pitt
or Mr. Canning.
It must not be supposed from this, however, that Mr. Chamberlain was
indifferent to, or ignorant of, the past. Though he was not going to let
himself be dominated by old traditions, he was as distinctly well read
in political history as in poetry. If he wanted to do so, he could quote
freely and intimately from Browning, or Matthew Arnold. The latter was,
I think, specially liked by him. But here again, any idea of his liking
to prove himself a person of culture or learning cannot be entertained
for a moment. He was much too sure of himself and much too sure of his
own aims to want to be regarded as a man of cultivation. He liked what
he liked, and he talked about what he liked. There was no "showing off."
Again, there was not the slightest touch of snobbishness in Mr.
Chamberlain. I don't think he was even amused by people expecting him,
because he was not a man of great family or known as a great merchant
prince, to be socially a kind of wild man to whom it must seem strange
to eat a good dinner every day of his life "complete with the best of
wines and cigars,"--in fact, to live exactly like men who had inherited
their money, not made it. In truth, though the fact was unknown to the
public and it never occurred to Mr. Chamberlain to talk about it, he was
not a self-made man, but the son of a rich father. He belonged to a very
old City family, for Mr, Chamberlain was not a Birmingham man, but a
Londoner, through and through. His family had, however, remained in
London even after it had grown rich and not retired to the country, like
so many "warm men" to use the eighteenth century _argot_. I
remember well Austen Chamberlain telling me that he had taken up his
membership of the Cordwainers Company by right of inheritance. His
family had been connected with that company in tail male, so to speak,
since the time of Charles II.
This connection with the city companies had an interesting result. In
the '70s and '80s it was a mark of a Radical to demand the abolition of
the Livery Companies of London and to say hard things about the
Corporation and the City. A Radical meeting was hardly complete without
an attack on the City and its "fat and feasting Tories." When you were
on a Radical platform you expected indeed as Shakespeare says:
"... to hear the City
Abused extremely, and to cry 'That's witty!'"
Mr. Chamberlain, however, whether in the House of Commons or on the
platform, did not like his Colleagues to abuse the City Companies, but
instead, gave them, as all sane people will now agree quite rightly, the
benefit of his support. We should all be the poorer without the
picturesqueness lent to London Municipal Life by its livery. Some of
them may still want a little reform, but for the most part their wealth
is well spent.
But Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain were not only good country hosts. Nothing
could have been more pleasant or more interesting than their London
dinners. The talk was always good and Mr. Chamberlain was always the
chief point of attraction. He was never cross, or moody, or depressed.
Instead, he was always ready to talk. You could put up any game with him
and he would fly at it with zest and spirit.
Time has not dimmed the warmth of my personal feeling either for Austen
or Neville Chamberlain. And here I want to say one word of regret in
respect of Miss Beatrice Chamberlain,--her father's eldest daughter who
died during the first year of the Peace. She was a woman of great
ability and inherited no small share of her father's power of talk and
fondness for social life. Highbury house-parties owed much to her.
CHAPTER XXV
FIVE GREAT MEN (_Continued_)
It was at one of Mr. Chamberlain's house-parties that I first met one of
the five distinguished men who made a deep impression on my mind and so
on my life. That man was Colonel John Hay, some time Ambassador of the
United States to this country. I shall never forget going down, some
thirty-two years ago, to Birmingham with my wife for a Saturday to
Monday party, and finding that the chief guest was the new American
Ambassador. When one is young and going to a pleasant house, there is
nothing more delightful or stimulating than the moment of waiting at the
side of a country-house omnibus consecrated to station work and
wondering who are to be one's fellow-guests. On that occasion it was not
long before we discovered that they were Colonel and Mrs. Hay and their
daughter Helen. It did not take one long to see what a memorable man Hay
was. It was indeed a case for me of friendship at first sight. Though it
only took, even in pre-motor days, some twenty minutes to drive to
Highbury, I had become, long before we reached the front door, a fervent
admirer of the man who had been Private Secretary to the greatest man of
modern times,--Abraham Lincoln.
The acquaintance begun at Highbury ripened for both of us into a true
friendship. I was deeply touched to find that Mr. Hay met me half way in
my desire to be friendly, for I knew enough about him to know that his
reputation was that of a very reticent, very fastidious man--a person by
no means inclined to fall into the arms of the first comer. But I don't
want to flatter myself. Perhaps the passport to Hay's heart in my case
was my love of Lincoln, for that he soon saw was real and not assumed.
Anyway, Hay and I soon began to see a great deal of each other, and he
paid me the compliment of confiding in me throughout the war between
Spain and America. He would have liked to avoid that war and did his
very best to do so, but I knew that all the time he felt it was
inevitable. I remember well his saying to me that the positions of the
United States and Spain were like two railway engines on the same track,
neither of which would give way and both of which were advancing. You
might delay the collision, but you could not prevent it, unless one
train cleared out of the way of the other, and to this neither side in
control would agree. Therefore, a collision had to come,--and come it
did.
Hay loved his tenure of office in England and greatly regretted that he
had to accede to Mr. McKinley's request that he should go back and
become Secretary of State. He knew the work would be too much for him,
and told me so quite simply and unaffectedly, but he was never a man to
shirk a duty. During his term of office, he and I were constantly in
touch with each other by letter. Though Hay did not write long letters,
he contrived in his short notes to say many poignant things,--often in
the form of comments on _Spectator_ articles, for he was a diligent
reader of my paper. One example is so curious and so interesting that I
must set it forth. The War enables me to do so without any risk of doing
injury in the diplomatic sphere. It concerns the memorable visit of
Prince Henry of Prussia to the United States in the year 1902.
The Kaiser was alarmed at the good feeling growing up between Britain
and the United States. He therefore made a special effort to capture
American goodwill, largely in the hope of drawing off American sympathy
from this country. Accordingly he sent his sailor brother to American to
announce his august and Imperial satisfaction with the United States.
The Americans--most kindly of hosts--gave him the best possible
reception. At that time Mr. Roosevelt was President, and Hay was
Secretary. Writing of Prince Henry's reception on March 1, 1902, _The
Spectator_ pointed out what delightful hosts the Americans had proved
and were proving, but went on to express very grave doubt whether in the
circumstances and with the men then at the helm, the Kaiser would "cut
any political ice" or gain any material advantage by the visit or by the
attempts at diplomatic bargaining sure to be connected with it. The
article continued as follows:
American photographers are taking "snapshots" of the
Prince at every turn in his progress; but the snapshots we
should like to see would be those of the President and Mr. Hay
just before and just after the Prince had made some political
request. They would hardly look, if our view of the American
temperament is correct, like the faces of the same persons.
The infinitely courteous hosts will in a moment become hard
business men, thinking not of the pleasantest sentences to say,
but of the permanent interests of the United States. Only
the humour might linger a little in the eyes.
The article took some six days to get to America, but as soon as it was
possible for a return of comments I received from Hay the following
characteristic and laconic note:
_Spectator_, March 1, p. 317, 2nd Column,
half-way down.
My Dear Strachey,
You are a mind reader.
J. H.
I turned eagerly to the passage, for I could not at the moment recollect
what we had said, and found what I have given above. By a guess, or
(shall I say?) by a piece of thought transference, I had had the good
luck to envisage exactly what had happened at Washington. Prince Henry
was not merely a social but a political bagman. He had asked for
something. He wanted a tangible "souvenir" of his visit. He had made
proposals to the State Department of the usual Prussian type. By "usual
Prussian type," I mean that he had asked for concessions of territory
and engagements in which all the real, and most of the apparent, benefit
was on the Prussian side. I do not now remember their exact nature,
though later I learned from Hay something of their general scope and
character. My only trustworthy recollection is that Hay referred to them
with that patient, well-bred disgust with which he always received
overtures of this kind. He was a man of a very fastidious sense of
honour, and not amused by the low side of life, or by trickery even when
foiled. And here I may perhaps be allowed to interpolate another
personal recollection. I remember his telling me twenty years ago--that
is, during the Spanish War--how the German Ambassador in London had
approached him officially with the request that a portion of the
Philippine Islands should be ceded--Heavens knows why--to the Kaiser. I
can well recall his contemptuous imitation of the manner of the request.
"You haf so many islands; why could you not give us some?" I asked Hay
what he had replied. With a somewhat grim smile he answered: "I told
him: 'Not an island--not one!'"
I shall perhaps be accused of indiscretion in what I have written,
especially when I am dealing with a man so discreet, so punctilious in
all official intercourse, as John Hay. I feel, however, that I am
justified by the time which has elapsed, and by the events of the last
few years.
I could fill, not one, but several chapters with the delightful talks
about Lincoln which I had with Mr. Hay. He was always at his best when
talking about Lincoln. It must not be supposed, however, that he was a
man with one idea or that he was, as it were, eaten up by his great
chief. Hay was a true statesman and a man with clear and consistent
views of his own. I had the pleasure of bringing Hay into touch with
Lord Cromer. Cromer was, of course, greatly impressed. I remember
pointing out to him that Hay was really the best illustration that he
could have had for one of his favourite theories,--that is, that the
people who in their youth had been private secretaries were, other
things being equal, the best people to whom to give big appointments.
Cromer used to say that the reason for this was a very plain one. The
difficulty with most officials, and especially with men in the Army, was
that they so often did not attain to positions of real responsibility,
and where they had to take the initiative, till their minds had been
atrophied by official routine and by the fact that they had simply
carried out other people's orders, and not to think or act for
themselves. It was different with a young man who at the most
impressionable time of life had not only been under the influence of a
great man, but had seen great affairs absolutely at first hand and not
dressed up in official memoranda. Again, the Private Secretary saw the
whole of them and not merely departmental fragments.
It was no doubt this fact which made Hay a great Ambassador and a great
Secretary of State. He had not only had the magnificent education which
was received by the whole of Lincoln's personal staff, the inspiration,
intellectual, moral, and political, which a man like Lincoln spreads
around him, but he had seen at their very source the great affairs of
home, war, and foreign politics.
He had seen how great questions arise and how hard it is to settle them;
how they go wrong through accidents, or delay, or negligence, how
necessary it is to prevent the rise of prejudice, selfishness, and folly
in their handling. In a word, there could not have been a better proof
of Lord Cromer's dictum than Hay's career. I remember talking on the
general subject to Hay, who in effect agreed, and later I also said the
same thing to President Roosevelt. I told him I thought it was a great
pity that the Presidents of the United States and other holders of great
offices did not encourage young men of brains and also of great
possessions, coming from families with great influence, local or social,
to become, when young, private secretaries. There would be a double
blessing produced thereby. It would help to bind men of wealth and
influence to the public service, and would get them trained to fill in
later life the great offices of State--Cabinet Ministers, Ambassadors,
and special commissioners. If a young man had been a member, say, of the
President's official family for four or five years and had then gone
into business or even into leisure, he would, granted that he was a man
of intelligence, have received an insight into affairs which might be of
great use to the nation later on. I even went so far as to dream that
the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great
Britain might have an occasional exchange of secretaries and so get a
certain number of people on both sides of the Atlantic who knew
something about the arcana in each government. As it is, both halves of
the English-speaking race are apt to make official bogeys,--to spell
Washington or London as the case may be with a very big capital letter,
and then to envisage this impersonation as something dark, mysterious,
or even terrible. How useful it would be if, when this sort of talk was
in the air, someone could say, "Honestly, they really are not a bit like
that (in Washington, or in London). You picture them as hard-shell
Machiavellis with sinister reasons for not answering our despatches or
proposals promptly, or as going behind our backs in this or that matter.
Believe me, they are just about like what we are here. They go out to
lunch as we do; they forget big things and trifle with small things, and
for fear of their trivialities being exposed, they talk big as if they
had some great and ruthless reasons of state for their official
misadventures. When you begin to ask, 'What are they up to? What is
their game?' the answer ninety-nine times out of a hundred is 'There is
not any game at all.'"
Before I take leave of Hay, I want to add a fact which deeply touched
me. It will be remembered that the Secretary of State, after a breakdown
in his health at Washington, came over to Europe to try the Mannheim
cure. The treatment at first seemed to do him good; but he was in truth
a broken man. So precarious, indeed, was his condition that, passing
through London, the only people he saw were Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign
Minister, and King Edward VII. I was the only exception. He asked me to
come up and see him, telling me that I must not let it be known or he
would be killed with kindness. If I was deeply touched by his thought of
me, I was still more moved to see how extreme was his weakness of body.
His mind, however, was as clear as ever and he talked almost in his old
way. He was the kind of man who was much too sensitive to say in words,
what I knew he felt--that it was good-bye. I came away from that last
talk, with my devotion to the man, high as it was before, greatly
heightened.
* * * * *
Though I did not know the Duke of Devonshire, earlier known as Lord
Hartington, nearly so intimately as the other four, I had for him a
political admiration which was almost unbounded. When a young man as was
only natural--I was twenty-six when I first came into contact with him--
I rather chafed at what I thought was his impenetrability. This,
however, I soon discovered was due to no want of intelligence, but
partly to natural shyness, partly to his education, partly to
temperament, and partly also to a kind of dumbness of the mind, which is
by no means inconsistent with a real profundity of intellect.
It is this mental profundity which is the main thing to remember about
the Duke of Devonshire. To speak of him as if he were merely a man of
character and firmness is to mistake him altogether. The Duke impressed
all who saw him at close quarters. It was only the people who did not
know him who said that he owed his rise to high office solely to his
birth and wealth. I remember Mr. Chamberlain once saying to me, "It's
all nonsense to talk about Hartington being dull and stupid. He is a
very clever man." What made this admission all the more memorable was
that Mr. Chamberlain was at the moment in a condition of something like
exasperation with his colleague's dilatory ways, and his constitutional
unwillingness to tackle a question till it was almost too ripe; you
simply could not hurry him. One of the difficult things about the Duke
was that he never realised the full greatness of his position in
politics, how much people depended on his lead, and how anxious they
were to find out what he thought and then fellow him without demur. But
the more they wanted to get a lead out of him, the more he seemed
determined to avoid if he possibly could the responsibility they had
asked him to assume, and partly because of a certain lethargy of his
mind, and partly because he never could be made to believe that anybody
could really want to lean upon and follow somebody else, he often
appeared to be utterly stubborn. I remember once, just before the
election in 1905, urging him as strongly as I knew how to make a public
statement and to give a public lead to the Unionist Free Trade electors
as to how they should vote. He was more than loath to take my advice. He
was all for letting the thing alone. He actually went so far as to say,
and remember, this was without the slightest suggestion of pose, "I
don't see why I should tell people what I should do if I had a vote.
They will do what they think right and I shall do what I think right.
They don't want me to interfere." It was no good to try and talk him
round, as one would have been inclined to talk round any ordinary
politician, by pointing out how very flattering it was to him for people
to wait upon his words and to desire to follow him, or to paint in
romantic language what he, as a leader of men, owed to his followers.
Anything of that sort was unthinkable with the Duke, and, if it had been
tried, would first of all have puzzled him utterly and when it had at
last dawned on him, would have put him off more than ever.
I could only repeat then that it was his duty to give people a lead and
when I said this once more I was met with the old tale that he would do
what he thought right, and they--the voters--would do what they thought
right. But what was wonderful in the Duke about a matter of this kind
was that he did not in the least show any annoyance at being badgered by
a man who was not only so much younger than he was, but also of so much
less experience in politics or affairs.
He was essentially a good-tempered man and had not a trace of _amour
propre_ in his nature. I doubt if he had ever intentionally snubbed a
man in his life, though, no doubt, he had often done so unintentionally,
for he was plain-spoken. He hated to hurt people's feelings, but he
sometimes thought that their feelings were like his own, quite iron-
clad. I remember an example of his imperturbability in this respect.
Once, in the eagerness of pressing a plan of action for the Unionist
Free Traders, to which he was disinclined, I expressed the wish to
propose it to the Council of our group and see what they thought of it.
He made no objection and I gathered that he thought it could do no harm
to have the matter aired, which, of course, was all I desired. A day or
two afterwards, however, the Duke casually and in the most good-humoured
way happened to say to me that I, of course, no doubt realised that if
people assented to my motion, he would have to resign as President of
our Association. I was, horror-struck, for to have lost him would have
meant utter destruction for our movement,--the movement, that is, to
prevent the Tariff Reformers running away with the Unionist Party. I
said at once that I would most gladly withdraw my proposal, and
expressed my complete confidence in his leadership.
He was delightfully naive about the whole matter and, here again,
without any pose. He declared that he did not see why I should not go on
with my scheme if I really thought it was a good one, and that he did
not regard it as in the least hostile to himself. There was nothing in
it that was in the least personally objectionable to him.
At a much earlier period of my acquaintance with him the Duke gave
another example of his good nature and want of fussiness. When the split
came in the Liberal party and the Liberal Unionist organisation was
created under his leadership and that of Mr. Chamberlain, I was chosen
as I have related elsewhere to act as Editor of the party organ, _The
Liberal Unionist._ Each number was to contain an article by some man
of importance, so I naturally asked Lord Hartington, as he then was, to
supply the signed article for the first number. I was entirely new to
the task of editing, and the Duke had never, oddly enough, written
anything before for publication, though, of course, he had made plenty
of speeches. The Duke was old-fashioned in his ways and did not have a
typewriter or a secretary, but wrote with his own hand. It was a very
good handwriting, but not quite printer-proof. Like all first numbers
mine was late. The proofs of the Duke's article were not sent out early
enough, with the result that we had to go to press without getting back
a corrected proof from the Duke. The result was one or two bad
misprints; the Duke was not angry--only sad, for he thought it might
make him look ridiculous. I was told, however, by excited members of the
Committee that I had made an awful blunder and must go and apologise for
so bad a beginning. Naturally, I was eager to express my regret, and
went down at once to the House of Commons and sent in for him. Now, as
ill-luck would have it, he was in the middle of an important debate on
Home Rule and just on the point of rising to speak when he received my
message. However, in the kindest way he came out, to see, as he said,
whether he could do anything for me, and apologised most profusely for
having kept me waiting for ten or twelve minutes. It was not, indeed,
till these apologies had been got over that I was able to make my
apologies, which he received in the most delightful way. If he had been
a pompous prig, he might so easily have lectured me (for I was not 26)
on how important it was for a young man just entering political life,
etc., etc. Of course, he had no thought of making me his special
adherent by his good temper and easiness. Such things never entered his
head. All the same, his courtesy, consideration, and evident
determination not to take advantage of my slip, made a deep impression
on me. A final example of the Duke's inability to realise that it
mattered to anybody else what he did was shown when he let Mr. Balfour,
then Prime Minister, persuade him to remain in the Unionist Ministry in
1905 when the rest of his Free Trade colleagues resigned. I felt none of
the amazement mixed with indignation felt by some of the Liberal
Unionists, because I knew my man, I felt, indeed, quite sure that what
had happened was that the Duke imagined that nobody would misunderstand
him and that perhaps, as he said, it was a pity when so many people were
resigning that he should resign also. He wouldn't be missed and so why
should he not just remain where he was? I felt equally sure, however,
that in a very little time he would come to understand the importance of
clearing up his position.
I was on manoeuvres and riding with the Hampshire Yeomanry at a great
sham fight on the Wiltshire downs, when I heard of the Cabinet crisis. I
well remember that on a hill-top, which was finally carried by our side,
I met the present Lord Middleton, then Mr. St. John Broderick, Secretary
of State for War and learned from him what had happened. That night I
went home to write on the crisis. When I got home I said to my wife,
"The Duke has not resigned, but it is all right. I will write an article
in _The Spectator_ which, while perfectly sympathetic, will set
forth the situation in a way which will be certain to bring the Duke
out." The result was as I expected.
I was interested some time afterwards to hear from one of his relatives
that my article was largely instrumental in determining him to follow
his followers in the matter of resignation. Almost the last time I saw
the Duke of Devonshire affords another example of his good-nature, of
his plain-spokenness, of his humanity, and of his public spirit. I had
always been, and still am, deeply concerned in the housing question. We
cannot be a really civilised nation unless we can get good houses and
cheap houses for the working-classes. Not being a philosopher, I had
always supposed that one way of getting good and cheap houses was to
find some improved form of construction. I have been informed, however,
by my Socialist friends that this is an entire mistake and that there
are much better ways. Though admitting that this was possible, and
hoping that it might be, I was always inclined to add, though I made no
converts,--"However good the other scheme, cheap construction, granted
it is also adequate construction, must be a desirable premium upon any
and every other scheme, financial or rhetorical, of getting good
houses." Therefore, I advocated and carried out by the joint action of
_The Spectator_ and another paper I then owned, _The County
Gentleman,_ a scheme for an exhibition of good cottages, in which a
prize was given for the best cottage. The novelty of my plan was that
the exhibits were not to be models of cottages, but were to be real
cottages. The Garden City were almost as glad to lend me their ground as
I was to avail myself of it, and by a well thought out arrangement we
were able, as it were, to endow the Garden City with some L20,000 worth
of good cottages without their having to put their hands into their
pockets. It was quite easy to guarantee to find purchasers or hirers of
the cottages put up by competitors. The competitor, therefore, could not
lose his money or tie it up for very long, and he was very likely able
to win a prize in one of the various categories. The greater number of
cottages were planned for competitions in which the cost was limited to
L150, for that was my ideal of the price for a cottage; and if a
competitor was sure to get his L150 back and might also get a prize
either of L150, or L100, or L50, he was in clover. But I am not out
to describe the success of the Cheap Cottages Exhibition, but only to
throw light on the character of the Duke of Devonshire. I asked the Duke
to open the Exhibition for me, and this he did in a speech full of
excellent good sense. He obeyed _ex animo_ my direction of "No
flowers by request." I remember, however, being somewhat disconcerted as
we went down in the special train by a remark which he made to one of
the Directors of the Garden City, who was saying, very properly, the
usual things about how pleased the Company had been to help with my
scheme. The Duke, with a loud laugh, replied with what was meant to be a
perfectly good-tempered joke, "And a jolly good advertisement for your
company you must have found it. Ha! Ha!" The Director, as was perhaps
not to be wondered at, looked somewhat flabbergasted at this sally.
Fortunately, I overheard it and was able to prevent any risk of wounded
feelings by explaining how helping to spread information in regard to
the good work being done by the Garden City was a thing which I and
those who were helping me were specially glad to do. If we had been able
to provide a useful advertisement for the Company we should feel almost
as well pleased as by the success of our own venture. The Duke at once
fully assented, but I don't think he in the least realised that his
original way of putting the remark might easily have given umbrage. If
it had been said to him and not by him it would not have caused any
annoyance and he no doubt assumed that other people would feel as simply
and as naturally as he did.
It would be impossible to give any account of the Duke and his character
and actions without noticing his devotion to the Turf. It was that
devotion which made Lord Salisbury once say with humorous despair that
he could not hold a most important meeting "because it appears that
Hartington must be at Newmarket on that day to see whether one quadruped
could run a little faster than another." The Duke was quite sincere in
his love of racing. There was no pose about it. He did not race because
he thought it his duty to encourage the great sport, or because he
thought it would make him popular, or for any other outside reason. He
kept racers and went to races because he loved to see his horses run,
though oddly enough I don't think he was ever a great man across
country, or was learned in matters of breeding and trainers. He just
liked racing and so he practised it and that is all that is to be said
about it. In this combination of sport and high political seriousness
he was extraordinarily English. Pope described the Duke's attitude
exactly in his celebrated character of Godolphin; the words fit the Duke
of Devonshire absolutely. They may well serve as a peroration to this
chapter.
Who would not praise Patricio's high desert,
His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart,
His comprehensive head! all interests weigh'd,
All Europe sav'd, yet Britain not betray'd?
He thanks you not,--his pride is in piquet,
Newmarket fame, and judgment at a bet.
But I am dwelling too much on the picturesque side of the Duke and so
getting too near the caricature view of the man. What I want is to give
in little a true picture of a really great man, for that is what he in
truth was.
Instead of tracing the Duke's political actions and political opinions,
I prefer to attempt an analysis of his political character. The first
and most obvious fact about the Duke was his independence, and what I
may call his inevitableness of action. Knowing the Duke's views on a
particular subject, you could always tell in any given circumstance what
would be his line of conduct. With most politicians explanations have to
be found at some point of their career for this or that action.
Everything seemed to point to their taking a particular course, and yet
they took another. In the case of one man this was due to influence
exerted over him by a friend. In that of another it was due to hostility
to some colleague or rival. The personal element deflected the course of
history. In the case of the Duke of Devonshire such explanations are
unthinkable. It is impossible to imagine him a Home-ruler out of
devotion to Mr. Gladstone, or a Free-trader out of jealousy or distrust
of Mr. Chamberlain. The Duke had no dislikes or prejudices of this kind.
Certainly he had none in the case of Mr. Chamberlain. All the efforts of
the Tapers and Tadpoles and paragraph-writers in the Press failed to
produce the slightest sense of rivalry between them. The Duke, to use a
racing phrase, went exclusively on men's public form, and gave his
contemporaries credit for the same public spirit which he himself
showed.
He was the last man in the world to think that he had a monopoly of
patriotism. His high-mindedness was, he assumed, shared by others. He
never betrayed a colleague, and he never thought it possible that a
colleague could think of betraying him. The result was that throughout
his career he was never once the victim of any intrigue or conspiracy.
He kept his mind fixed always on questions and not on men, and just as
he always endeavoured to solve the real problem at issue rather than
secure a party triumph, so his aim was to bring advantage to the nation,
not to gain a victory over an opponent. I should be the last to say that
in this the Duke of Devonshire was unique. What, however, was unique
about his position was the fact that no one ever attributed to him
unworthy motives or insinuated that he was playing for his own hand. If
any one had ventured to do so, the country would simply have regarded
the accuser as mad.
Another striking quality possessed by the Duke of Devonshire was his
absolute straightforwardness of conduct and clearness of language. No
one ever felt that he had a "card up his sleeve." He told the country
straight out exactly what he thought, and his reticence--for reticent he
was in a high degree--was due, not to the fact that he did not think it
advisable at the moment to let the country know what he was thinking,
but simply and solely to the fact that he had not been able to come to a
determination. He did not like meeting questions half-way, but waited
till circumstances forced them on his attention.
The late Duke of Argyll once said of him at a public meeting: "Oh,
gentlemen, what a comfort it is to have a leader who says what he means
and means you to understand what he says." Here in a nutshell was the
quality which the country most admired in the Duke of Devonshire. They
always knew exactly what he stood for, and whether he was a Unionist or
a Home-ruler, a Free-trader or a Protectionist. He was never seeking for
a safe point to rest on, one which, in the immortal language of the
politician in the _Biglow Papers_, would leave him "frontin' south
by north."
In spite of the independence, straightforwardness, and clearness of the
Duke's attitude, he often showed a curious diffidence, and seemed unable
to realise that he had so absolutely the confidence of the country that
no explanations were ever necessary in his case. For example, after the
secession of the Unionist Free-traders from Mr. Balfour's Administration
spoken of above, the Duke thought it necessary to explain--in his place
in the House of Lords--how it was that he remained for a few days
longer in the Cabinet than did his Unionist Free-trade colleagues. I
have reason to know that the Duke found such an explanation a painful
and trying one to make. Nevertheless he insisted on making it, and this
though on the day he spoke he was suffering from the beginnings of a
severe attack of influenza. It will be remembered that he then declared,
with a sincerity which in one sense deeply touched, and in another sense
might almost be said to have amused, the nation, that his mind was not
so clear as it ought to have been during his negotiations with Mr.
Balfour, and that he had not at first completely grasped the situation.
As a matter of fact, is it safe to say that no one, least of all his
Unionist Free-trade colleagues, thought there was the slightest need for
such an apology. If the thought of the nation on that occasion could
have been put into words, it would have run something like this:--"There
was not the least reason for you to say what you have said. Every one
recognised that you would in the end do exactly what you did--that is,
leave the Ministry--and the fact that you took four or five days longer
than your colleagues to realise that this was inevitable was looked on
as the most natural thing in the world. It was a proof to the British
people as a whole that a Free-trader could do nothing else. If you had
acted as quickly as others, it might possibly have been thought that
there was something not absolutely necessary in your action."
The Duke of Devonshire was often spoken of as a great aristocrat and as
a representative of the aristocratic interests in the country. Nothing,
however, could have been further from the truth. Though no doubt the
Duke was in a sense intensely proud of being a Cavendish, and though he
felt in his heart of hearts very strongly the duty of _noblesse
oblige_, he had nothing of that temperament which people usually mean
when they use the word "aristocrat." He was the last man in the world
whom one could associate with the idea of the noble who springs upon a
prancing war-steed, either real or metaphorical, and waves his sword in
the air. His represented rather what might be called the old-fashioned
English temperament, the possessors of which in effect say to the
world:--"I'll mind my own business, and you mind yours. You respect me,
and I'll respect you. You stand by me, and I'll stand by you; and when
we have both done our duty to ourselves and each other, for heaven's
sake don't let us have any d----d nonsense about it."
But though this is true in a sense, one would lose touch altogether with
the Duke's character if one insisted on it too much, or gave the
impression that the Duke's nature was one of surly defiance such as
Goldsmith describes in the famous line on the Briton in _The
Traveller_. No doubt one of his colleagues, Robert Lowe, once said of
him: "What I like about Hartington is his 'you-be-damnedness.'" But
though this element was not wanting in the Duke's character, it did not
in any way prevent him from being at heart as kindly, as sympathetic,
and as courteous as he was reasonable, straightforward, and plain-
spoken.
One may strive as one will to draw the character of the Duke, but in the
end one comes back to the plain fact that he was a great public
servant,--one who served, not because he liked service for its own sake
or for the rewards it brought in sympathy and public applause, but
solely because he was mastered by the notion of duty and by the sense
that, like every other Englishman, he owed the State a debt which must
be paid. Pope said of one of his ancestors that he cared not to be great
except only in that he might "save and serve the State." That was
exactly true of the late Duke of Devonshire.
This tradition of public service is one which has long been associated
with the house of Cavendish, and it is cause for national congratulation
to think that there is no risk of that tradition being broken. The
present Duke possesses the high character and the sense of public duty
which distinguished his predecessor. It may safely be predicted of him
that the ideals of public duty maintained by his uncle will not suffer
in his keeping.
* * * * *
Of the five great figures in England and America, who were known to me
and who are dead, I find by far my greatest difficulty in writing about
Theodore Roosevelt. Though I saw very much less of him than I did of
Lord Cromer, my feeling of regret at his death was specially poignant.
Mr. Roosevelt was almost my exact contemporary. Therefore, I could look
forward, and did look forward, to enjoying his friendship for many years
to come. Lord Cromer was ten or fifteen years my senior, and, though my
intimacy with him was of the very closest, far closer than that which I
enjoyed with Mr. Roosevelt, I did not feel myself on the same plane with
him. To put the matter specifically, Lord Cromer was engaged in most
important and most responsible public work when I was little more than a
child, and by the time I left Oxford he had already finished the first
three or four years of his great task in Egypt. Again, when Roosevelt's
death came, it came without warning. I did not know that his health had
in any way been failing.
Roosevelt and I were always so much in accord and our friendship through
the post was of so intimate a kind that I am sometimes amazed when I
think of the comparatively small number of days, or rather hours, that I
actually passed in his company. For several years before I saw him in
the flesh I had exchanged constant letters with him, and so much did he
reveal himself in them that, when we did meet, he appeared to me exactly
the man I had envisaged. Naturally I wondered greatly whether this would
be so, and took a strict inquisition of the impression made on me in
seeing him face to face. In similar cases, one almost always finds
surprises in minor, if not in major, differences; but Roosevelt needed
no re-writing on the tablets of my mind.
I shall never forget my visit to the White House. If I had slept under
that roof alone, and without any guide or interpreter, I should have
been deeply moved. My readers then may imagine what my feelings were
when I, who had read and thought so much of Lincoln, found that my
dressing-room was the little sanctum upstairs into which Lincoln, in the
crises of the war, used to retire for consultation with his Generals,
Ministers, and intimate friends. At that time the ground floor of the
White House, other than the great ceremonial rooms, had been almost
entirely absorbed by the various officials connected with the
Presidency.
Our train from New York was nearly an hour late, and, therefore, when we
arrived, we had only bare time to dress for dinner. Yet when we reached
the room where guests assembled before dinner we found the President
alone. Though it was through no fault of ours that we were late, my wife
had fully realised the necessity of being down in time. Dinner was if I
remember rightly at eight, and we were shaking hands with the President
by five minutes to.
I have already described how Lord Cromer at first sight showed himself
willing to tell me everything and to trust wholly to the discretion of
his visitor. Mr. Roosevelt exhibited an equal confidence. In the long
talk which I had with him on my first evening at the White House,
throughout the Sunday and during a long ride on the Monday, in pouring
rain on a darkish November evening, we talked of everything under the
sun, and had our talk out. Mr. Roosevelt was one of those very busy men
who somehow contrive to have time for full discussion. After breakfast
on the Monday morning,--we did not move to other quarters in Washington,
till late on the Monday,--Mr. Roosevelt asked me whether I would like
to see how he got through his work. I accepted with avidity. Accordingly
we went from the White House to the President's office, which had been
built, under Mr. Roosevelt's directions, in the garden and was just
finished. We first went into Mr. Roosevelt's special room. There he put
me in a window seat and said I was quite free to listen to the various
discussions which he was about to have with Cabinet Ministers, Judges,
Ambassadors, Generals, Admirals, Senators, and Congressmen.
It was very remarkable to see the way in which he managed his
interlocutors,--who by the way apparently took me either for a private
secretary or else as part of the furniture! I recall the clever manner
in which Mr. Roosevelt talked to an Ambassador, and kept him off thorny
questions, and yet got rid of him so skilfully that his dismissal looked
like a special act of courtesy. The interview with a leading Western or
Southern Senator, who had got some cause of complaint, I forget what,
was equally courteous and dexterous, though the President's attitude
here was, of course, perfectly different. Roosevelt was a man, for all
his downrightness, of great natural dignity and of high breeding, though
he had the good sense never, as it were, to _affiché_ this good
breeding to any man who might have misunderstood it and thought that he
was being patronised. In this case the Senator was a self-made man, who
would, no doubt, have been suspicious if he had been talked to in the
voice and language used for the Ambassador. Mr. Roosevelt had no
difficulty whatever in making his change of manners as quick as it was
complete. A Judge of the Supreme Court, who came for a short talk,
demanded yet a third style and got it, as did also one of the members of
the President's Cabinet.
"The President's Cabinet" remember, is not only a piece of official
style. It represents a fact. The American Cabinet Ministers are not
responsible to Congress, as ours are to Parliament, but are the nominees
of the President and responsible only to him. In a word, they are
_"the President's Cabinet."_ Communications between them and the
House of Representatives and the Senate come always theoretically, and
largely actually, through the President.
After an hour, or rather more, had been spent in these interviews, the
President took me into another room, which was the Cabinet Room, and
very soon the Members of the Administration began to assemble and to
take their seats round the big table in the centre. I felt as the
children say, that this was getting "warm." Even though I had the
President's general leave to stop, I thought I had better not take
advantage of it. As soon as I saw my friend Colonel Hay enter, I went up
to him and asked him whether he did not think that though I had been
honoured by the President's invitation, I had better not remain during
the Cabinet. I could see that this relieved him not a little. Though
devoted to Roosevelt, he was a little inclined to think that the
President's ways were sometimes too unconventional. Therefore, I slipped
quietly out of the room.
It is amusing to recall that when at luncheon, I apologised half
whimsically for my desertion, Mr. Roosevelt told me that I had acted
_"with perfect tact."_ Anyway, I look back to the incident with
interest. I hold that I probably got nearer to seeing the United States
Cabinet actually at work than do most people. Business had actually
begun before I completed my retreat.
I won the approval of the President not only for my discretion here,
but, as I afterwards found out, for my complete willingness, nay,
pleasure, in going out for a ride with him in a flood of rain on a dark
November evening. That was not a very great feat, but apparently some of
his visitors had shown themselves anything but happy in such rides. He
was indeed inclined to use his afternoon winter rides as a test of men.
Accustomed, however, as I was to the English climate and always, not
only willing, but intensely eager to get on the back of a horse, it
never occurred to me to think that our ride would either be put off
because it poured or its accomplishment counted to me for righteousness.
Certainly it was a curious kind of ride. I was mounted on a superb
Kentucky horse procured for me from the Cavalry Barracks--a creature
whose strength and speed proved how well deserved is the reputation of
that famous breed. We were a party of four, with General Wood and a
young aide-de-camp. No sooner were we mounted--I on a McClellan saddle--
than we set off at a fast pace which very soon became a gallop. I
remember, as we dashed through the rain on the hard pavements, thinking
that our horses' hooves sounded like an elopement on the stage--"heard
off". The lovers' ardour is usually marked by the vivid manner in which
their horses wake the thunders of the King's highway.
We crossed the well-known creek or torrent in the park near the city,
which meant putting our horses through a fairly swift and broad though
not deep stream, and then passed through what had once been a largish
plantation. The trees had, however, been cut down a year or two before.
This we negotiated at a gallop, the President leading. I admit that it
was an exciting performance. Not only was it almost dark when we reached
the wood or ex-wood, but the wood-cutters had left the stumps of
innumerable small trees or saplings, standing up about six inches from
the ground. You could hardly imagine anything better devised for
catching a horse's foot. But even worse than the risk of a horse
stumbling over a stump, was the thought of his putting his hoof down on
one of the more sharply pointed stumps, often not more than the
thickness of a big walking stick. It would have pierced like a spear.
However, I felt that the honour of my country and of my profession as a
journalist were at stake. Therefore, I made my horse, who was not at all
unwilling, keep well alongside the President. Under such conditions
steering was impossible; and we galloped along at haphazard. I was
consoled to feel that if the President's horse could pick his way, mine
could probably do the same. As it happened nobody's horse made a
blunder, and we all four emerged quite safely from the ordeal and soon
turned homeward, but by a different way. Our pace, however, did not
slacken. We galloped along a main thoroughfare, which was not made safer
by tram lines. All the same I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and was proud
to bring my big horse of nearly seventeen hands home without a slip. It
was in truth a delightful experience. My horse proved well able to keep
up with the President's very fine charger--needless to say, I knew
enough to know that one does not attempt to out-ride persons in the
position of sovereigns--and we talked as hard as we rode, for a whole
hour without interruption.
The President's remark as we dismounted was characteristic,--"Don't you
think, Strachey. I am quite right, as I can only get an hour's exercise
a day, to go while I am at it, as hard as I can?" That remark was really
meant as a kind of rebound argument for General Wood.
I assured the President in the enthusiasm of the moment that he was
perfectly right, but General Wood in a ride, which I subsequently took
with him, shook his head over the President's way of galloping fast on
the hard roads and declared that he shook his horse's legs all to
pieces. Some day there would be an accident. "I try to get him to give
up the practice but I am afraid I don't have much success, though he
takes it very well. No, he's not a careful rider!"--a comment, by the
way, which I had so often heard about myself that it sounded quite
familiar. Need I add that this was anxious affection on the part of
General Wood, one of the ablest of military and civil administrators
alive today--and a man whom I am proud to say has honoured me with a
friendship as warm and as generous as that of his great Chief and
friend.
Some day my correspondence with Mr. Roosevelt will, I hope, see the
light; but not yet. The President's powers in the matter of letter
writing, however, deserve a special comment. He was probably one of the
greatest letter writers in the matter of quantity who ever lived. He was
also high up in quality. He liked letter writing, and he certainly
expressed himself not only with vigour but with ease and distinction. If
not a faultless writer, he wrote well enough for his purpose, and showed
his largeness and fineness of character. Though a well-educated man,
with a strong tradition of culture behind him, and, further, with a very
marked love of good literature, he was too busy and too practical to
find time to turn or tune his phrases. His letters are very readable and
from many points of view very attractive, but they do not possess the
kind of fascination which belongs to the correspondence of some of the
elder statesmen of England or America--the kind of fascination which we
may feel sure will be exercised whenever Lord Rosebery's letters are
given to the world--may the event be a long way off. Finally, they have
not that inspiration in word and thought of which the history of
personal and political correspondence affords us its best example in the
letters of Abraham Lincoln.
One of the delightful things about Roosevelt's correspondence is, that
he touched life at so many sides. He struck the hand of a great
gentleman, a great statesman, and, in the best sense, a man of the
world, into the hands not only of kings and emperors, ministers and
soldiers, but of authors, poets, artists, men of science, explorers,
naturalists, and last, but not least, of men of action in all ranks of
life. He attained to this freedom of the Great World early in life. He
had in effect that singular advantage which belongs to kings. For twenty
years of his life at least he had always at his command the best brains
in the world. He had only to make a sign to get _en rapport_ with
the man who knew most on the subject that was interesting him. Besides
this, as his Biographer, Mr. Bishop, has pointed out, Roosevelt had the
essential mark of a great man. Emerson truly said, "He is great who
never reminds us of others." Certainly Roosevelt stood alone. Though he
touched many men of the Old World and the New, and of the old age and
the new, he was intensely individual.
As to his personal characteristic. One of the most memorable of his
personal characteristics was that, in spite of the fierce conflicts of
his political life, no one ever seriously accused him of a mean or
ignoble act. Though, not professing to be a political saint, he ran as
straight as any statesman of whom we have record. Not Pitt nor Lord Grey
here, nor Washington nor Lincoln in America, had a finer sense of honour
and of political rectitude. He preached the square deal; he practised
it.
To do that in party politics and with a democracy so vast and so full of
cross-currents and stormy elements as that of America is not nearly as
easy as it sounds. Roosevelt was of course no plaster saint. He dared to
look at life as a whole, and without its trappings and disguises, and
yet all the time he made men feel that it was not only right but quite
possible, in Burke's phrase, "to remember so to be a patriot as not to
forget that you are a gentleman."
I shall not touch upon Mr. Roosevelt's political views or political
acts. They are too well known for comment. Nor, again, is there, I am
glad to say, any necessity to make clear in these pages how strong was
the sympathy between Roosevelt and the English people, and how anxious
he was to keep together the whole of the English-speaking race,--not, of
course, by any sort of alliance, but by mutual understanding, and
through adherence to common aims and common ideals.
These things are public property. What I would rather dwell upon is a
certain boldness of attitude in which Roosevelt set a wonderful example
to the leaders of a democracy. Though Mr. Roosevelt was in many ways an
exceedingly astute and practical politician, he was not the least awed
by rumour, not the least afraid of touching questions because they were
thorny. His attitude towards Labour when questions of public order were
involved, is well shown in the letter to Senator Lodge in which
Roosevelt gives an account of a visit which he paid to Chicago during a
strike, accompanied by disorder in the streets.
When I came to Chicago I found a very ugly strike, on
account of which some of my nervous friends wished me to try
to avoid the city. Of course I hadn't the slightest intention
of doing so. I get very much puzzled at times on questions of
finance and the tariff, but when it comes to such a perfectly
simple matter as keeping order, then you strike my long suit.
The strikers were foolish enough to come to me on their own
initiative and make me an address in which they quoted that
fine flower of Massachusetts statesmanship, the lamented
Benjamin F. Butler, who had told rioters at one time, as it
appeared, that they need have no fear of the United States
Army, as they had torches and arms. This gave me a good
opening, and while perfectly polite, I used language so simple
that they could not misunderstand it; and repeated the same
with amplifications at the dinner that night. So if the rioting
in Chicago gets beyond the control of the State and the City,
they now know well that the Regulars will come.
Commenting on the President's visit to Chicago, Mr. Secretary Hay said:
"It requires no courage to attack wealth and power, but to remind the
masses that they, too, are subject to the law, is something few public
men dare to do." That of course is perfectly true. But it is equally
true that when a public man does dare speak the truth it always turns
out to be the best and most paying policy that he could have adopted.
Roosevelt did not lose popularity with the mass of his countrymen but
gained it by his honesty.
Another example of Roosevelt's political honesty was the way in which he
treated the question of negro-lynching in the South. This is delicate
ground, and as I have been accused by a Southern newspaper most
absurdly, as I am certain all reasonable Americans will agree, of
attacking America and the American people because in _The
Spectator_ I have spoken out in regard to lynching, I will quote
without comment the account of Roosevelt's plain speaking, given by Mr.
Bishop:
The President gave another illustration of his courage in
October, 1905, when he made a tour of the South, speaking at
various points in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas,
and Alabama, including a visit to the home of his mother at
Roswell, Georgia. At Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 25th,
he was introduced by the Governor of the State to a large
concourse of citizens in the City Park. In his introductory
remarks, the Governor made a quasi defence of the lynching
of coloured men for supposed outrages upon white women.
In opening his speech the President declared that he had been
fortunate enough to have spoken all over the Union and had
never said in any State or any section what he would not have
said in any other State or in any other section. Turning a few
minutes later directly to the Governor, he said: "Governor,
you spoke of a hideous crime that is often hideously avenged.
The worst enemy of the negro race is the negro criminal, and,
above all, the negro criminal of that type; for he has
committed not only an unspeakably dreadful and infamous crime
against the victim, but he has committed a hideous crime
against the people of his own colour; and every reputable
coloured man, every coloured man who wishes to see the uplifting
of his race, owes it as his first duty to himself and to
that race to hunt down that criminal with all his soul and
strength. Now for the side of the white man. To avenge
one hideous crime by another hideous crime is to reduce the
man doing it to the bestial level of the wretch who committed
the bestial crime. The horrible effects of the lynchings are
not for that crime at all, but for other crimes. And above
all other men, Governor, you and I and all who are exponents
and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to
the cause of civilisation and humanity, to do everything in our
power, and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the
United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law."
I have never gone, and do not want to go, one hairs-breadth beyond what
Mr. Roosevelt said in condemnation of the lynchers. Further, I fully
realise that the best men in the South detest lynching and are as
anxious to put down lynching as indeed were the best men in the South to
get rid of slavery. I want, however, to say with Roosevelt that whatever
else is right, and whatever ought to be the relations between white men
and black, lynching must be wrong, and must tend to make the
difficulties of a mixed population even greater than they were already.
Whatever may be the vices of the black man, burning negroes alive at the
mandate of an irresponsible mob, who are acting on rumour and hearsay,
cannot but be the very acme of human depravity. And it is as stupid as
it is wicked.
Though there was a distinct strain of austerity as well as
authoritativeness in Mr. Roosevelt's nature, there was also a deep
strain of sentiment. He was a man easily moved, not only by "the sense
of tears in mortal things," but by all that was generous and noble. A
delightful example of how deeply and quickly his feelings could be
touched when a child is given by Mrs. Douglas Robinson, his sister, in
the account of her brother.
The Roosevelt family were in Rome at the end of the "sixties" and
played, like other English-speaking children, on the Pincian Hill. While
they were playing at leapfrog word was suddenly passed round that the
Pope was coming.
"Teddie" whispered to the little group of American children
that he didn't believe in Popes--that no real American would;
and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we
should share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then,
as is often the case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted,
and to our excited, childish eyes something very much like a
scene in a story-book took place. The Pope, who was in his
sedan-chair carried by bearers in beautiful costumes, his
benign face framed in white hair and the close cap which he
wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children craning
their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one
fragile, delicate hand towards us, and lo! the late scoffer who,
in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old
soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in
his nature, fell upon his knees, and kissed the delicate hand,
which for a brief moment was laid upon his hair. Whenever
I think of Rome this memory comes back to me, and in a way
it was so true to the character of my brother. The Pope to
him had always meant what later he would have called "unwarranted
superstition," but that Pope, Pio Nono, the kindly,
benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh, brought
about in my brother's heart the reaction which always came
when the pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.
That is almost as good a papal story as that of the Pope whom the great
Napoleon brought a virtual captive from the Vatican to grace his
coronation as Emperor. The Pope, while moving about Paris, was
accustomed to give his blessing freely, for he soon became a very
popular character. It happened, however, that one day, while going
through the galleries of the Louvre, he unwittingly gave his blessing to
a little crowd that contained a fierce, anti-clerical Jacobin and
revolutionary. The man showed the greatest disgust and contempt at
receiving the Pope's blessing, and retorted with curses on the man who
dared implore for him Heaven's grace and favour. The Pope, with his
Italian grace and good manners, easily got the best of the scowling
brows and the muttered imprecations. He apologised simply and humbly to
the man whom he had blessed by mistake and added, "I do not think, sir,
that after all an old man's blessing can have done you any harm." Quite
as little could Roosevelt's boyish kiss make him a votary to
superstition.
I feel for the reasons that I have already given that I am not managing
to express my personal feeling about Roosevelt. Yet he is the last man
of whom I want to write perfunctorily or even ceremoniously. Therefore,
for the time I shall bring my recollections of him to a close by merely
noting certain characteristics of the statesman.
The essential quality in Roosevelt was the spirit of good citizenship.
He was a very able politician and party leader. He was also no mean
orator in a nation where the arts of the rostrum are specially
cultivated and understood. He was a skilled and powerful administrator.
He had a soldier's eye for country and a soldier's heart. What is more,
he understood the soldier's spirit as well as did Cromwell. Though a
strict disciplinarian, he knew that if you are to get the best out of a
soldier, you must make him feel a free citizen and not a fighting slave.
Roosevelt, again, was a man highly qualified to be the personal
representative and head of a great nation. He had the dignity of
demeanour, the sense of proportion, the knowledge of the world, the
instinct for great affairs, together with that universality of
comprehension which is necessary to the efficient discharge of high
office.
Yet, great as was Roosevelt in all these matters, it was not so much the
qualities just enumerated which make, and will continue to make, his
memory live in America. Others could rival him or surpass him on the
political stage. He made good citizenship an art. He never tired in
enforcing by precept and example the duty which men and women owe to the
community. No man, as his life and work showed, can be allowed to keep
his good citizenship in watertight compartments. He must not say that he
had done his best in his district or city or State, or at Washington,
and that no more was to be required of him. He must do his duty to the
State in all capacities. Duty accomplished in one sphere would not
relieve him of responsibility in the others.
Though Roosevelt was a Whig, an individualist, and a man who hated over-
centralisation, abhorred administrative tyranny, and loathed
_Etatism_, he never failed to pay due homage to the nation
personified. To him the Government as representing the community, was
something sacred and revered, not merely a committee to manage tram-
lines, roads, and drains. Treason to the State was to him the greatest
of crimes. When he talked of the National Honour, he meant something
very real and definite, and was not merely indulging in a rhetorical
flourish. Good citizenship was indeed to Roosevelt a religion, as in a
rougher and less conscious way it was to Cromwell and to Lincoln.
CHAPTER XXVI
MY POLITICAL OPINIONS
Though I have been engaged in politics all my life, I have deliberately
left my political views, aspirations, and actions to almost the last
chapter in my autobiography. That will seem strange to all except my
most intimate friends, for I know well that the majority of people who
know anything of me regard me as altogether given over to politics.
My reason for assigning so small a place in my memoirs to what has
occupied so much of my life is a double one. In the first place, I was
most anxious not be polemical. Politics are synonymous with strife, and
if I had written a political biography, it would have become the record
of a battle, or rather, of many battles, in which I could hardly have
avoided saying hard things both of living and dead people. But that was
what I most wanted to avoid. The veteran who tells of his old fights is
always apt to become a bore. People who disagree with the view put forth
think him prejudiced and unforgiving, while those who are with him yawn
over a twice-told tale. Further, though I confess to being as deeply
interested and as deeply concerned in politics as ever, I have greatly
enjoyed a rest from strife. To suffer my mind to turn upon the poles of
literature and the humanities is a pure delight. No doubt Marcus
Aurelius in his autobiography says that life is more like a wrestling-
match than a dance. That was like a Stoic. Instead, I can say _ex
animo_ with Mrs. Gamp, "Them that has other natures may think
different! They was born so and can please themselves." Therefore, I have
chosen the point of view of the dance rather than the dust, the oil, and
the sweat of the athlete.
[Illustration: J St Loe Strachey at Newlands Corner Ætat 45]
But though I do not want to fight my political battles over again,
either in regard to Home Rule or the fiscal controversy, I realise that
my readers will, at any rate, expect me to say something about my
political views. Further than that, there are one or two things which,
if unsaid, would undoubtedly give a false impression of the writer of
this book.
The pivot of my politics is a whole-hearted belief in the principles of
Democracy. I mean by this, not devotion to certain abstract principles
or views of communal life which have had placed upon them the label
"Democratic," but a belief in the justice, the convenience, and the
necessity of ascertaining and loyally abiding by the lawfully-expressed
Will of the Majority of the People. By using the phrase "lawfully
expressed" I do not mean to suggest any pretext for evasion. On the
contrary, I use the words in order to prevent and avoid evasion. A good
many people who call themselves Democrats, or believers in the Popular
Will, such, for example, as the leaders of the French Revolution, the
apologists for the Russian Soviet, and the men from whose lips the words
"Proletariat" and "Proletarian" are constantly falling, do not, when it
comes to the point, want to obey the Will of the Majority of the whole
People, but only the majority of a certain arbitrarily selected section
of the people. They are, in fact, willing to recognise the Will of the
People only when this accords with their own will--that is, with what
they believe ought to be the Will of the People. When I use the
expression "the Will of the People lawfully and constitutionally
expressed," I use it to avoid this false democracy.
To put it quite frankly, I am willing to bow to the maxim, "Vox populi,
vox Dei" as long as the "vox populi" is the genuine thing and not
obtained by falsity or fraud, by corruption or coercion.
Though I am prepared to bow loyally to the Will of the People, whether I
personally agree with it or not, I, of course, have a right, nay, a
duty, to do my best to bring the Will of the People in accord with what
I hold to be right, just, and likely to promote the welfare of the
nation. I retain, that is, the right to convert, if I can, a minority
view into a majority view. If any section of the people try to prevent
me from exercising this right of conversion, then I believe that the
sacred right of insurrection arises.
It is possible that it arises also in the attempt to prevent me from
exercising the rights of conscience, that is, the right to think and to
express my views. The rights of conscience are not, in my opinion,
pooled and placed at the command of the majority, as are the
_actions_ and _behaviour_ of the units that make up the State.
The Will of the People even cannot command the minds of men and women.
That region is under an eternal taboo, which even the majority must not
attempt to violate. If they do make the attempt, they must expect
resistance. Christ taught us to "render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's," but a man's conscience is not one of Caesar's perquisites.
So much for the abstract basis of Democracy. Of the convenience of
following out and obeying the Democratic principle I have as little
doubt as I have of the moral obligation involved. What, in my view, is
wanted in the State is homogeneity. Such homogeneity, or, shall I call
it completeness of the admixture of the elements which constitute the
State, is essential. The fullest and strongest sanction for the laws is
the security of a State, and where can you get a sanction fuller and
stronger than the Will of the Majority?
The point is best seen in a simple illustration. Suppose that among
seven people in a railway carriage the question arises as to whether the
window is to be put up or down. As it must be settled one way or the
other, if order is to be preserved, the only just way is to go by the
Will of the Majority. If five people want it shut and only two want it
open, the will of the five must prevail. That, of course, does not prove
that the five have given a sound decision from the hygienic point of
view. They have, however, come to a settlement, and it is obvious that
the maximum of convenience rests in respecting that settlement. It has
the superior physical power behind it. If, however, any gentleman or
lady in the carriage can give a discourse upon the advantage of fresh
air, which will bring over three of those who originally voted in the
majority, then the policy can be changed.
With these views, it is no wonder that I have always found it impossible
to feel much sympathy with the people who say that Democracy is on its
trial and must be judged, like any other form of government, by its
results. This either means too much or too little. No doubt it may be
argued that, if the Will of the People properly expressed was to elect a
single man as dictator and invest him with the power of deciding in all
matters of detail, you might still have a Democracy, though it looked
like a Monarchy. But these are abstract points. For practical purposes
in a European community there can, in my opinion, be no doubt as to the
convenience of basing, in the last resort, your system of government
upon the Will of the People, as it is based, in theory, at any rate, in
England and in America.
I admit, however, that when you come to apply your principles in
practice the problem alters. Nothing is more obvious in our great modern
communities than the fact that the people cannot rule themselves
directly. Though they could meet in the Agora of Athens and decide the
fate of the Athenian Republic, or in the meadow of the Gemeinde at
Appenzell, or any of the other small Swiss cantons, in a country with
even only a couple of million of people, you must rely on the
Representative System. In other words, though the many must will the
direction in which the State shall move, it is only the few who can make
that will executive.
Now comes the difficulty. As the advocates of Proportional
Representation have been telling us for so many years, the
Representative System may actually place the control of the Government
in the hands of a minority. Again, though men may be elected to do one
thing, they may in practice do another. Representative assemblies are
often swayed, not merely by the voice of the orator, but, what is even a
more serious matter, by the voice of the minority. Also, as Mill pointed
out, under the party system applied to the Representative System, you
are liable to be ruled not by a majority, but by a majority of a
majority. Your Parliament is split up into two parties--the lefts and
the rights. The lefts are not completely homogeneous. Therefore they
have to decide on their course of action by a vote within their party.
But if the party is nearly divided, it may well be that the majority of
the majority is a small minority of the whole. But things are even worse
than that when party loyalty is maintained, as is usually the case.
Then, a minority within the lefts may be so powerful through its
persistency, or, again, through its fanatical obsession on a particular
point, that it is able to force a majority within the party to act in
the particular way the minority wants. In short, there are a dozen
different ways, under a Representative System, of making operative, not
the Will of the Majority of the People, but the Will of a Minority.
It is because of this that since the Anglo-Saxon peoples have had
representative institutions they have sought some system under which the
people as a whole could exercise a veto on the legislative vagaries of
their "deputies" or "select men." The people, in moments of tension,
have yearned for the right to veto the work of their representatives
when such work is obviously based upon the decision of a minority. The
only substantial result of that yearning in Great Britain up till now
has been the _ad hoc_ General Election.
At the time of the destruction of the Monarchy of Charles I, the Army of
the Commonwealth, a very democratic body, actually demanded the
Referendum, or Poll of the People, for all important changes in the
Constitution. Their descendants in the United States, though they did
not insert the Popular Veto in the Federal Constitution, have in each
State decreed that all fundamental legislation, _i.e._, all changes
in the Constitution, shall be passed subject to the veto of the whole
mass of the electors. Switzerland is generally regarded as the home of
the Referendum, though in reality that honour belongs to the individual
States of the American Union. In Switzerland every Federal Act is either
submitted _automatically_ or else is submittable "on demand," to
the veto of the People.
Favouring, as I do, real Democracy, and so believing that the Will of
the People alone should prevail, and that we should get complete and
unchallengeable sanction for the laws, I have always regarded the
Referendum, or Poll of the People, as an essential corrective to the
inconveniences and anomalies of the Representative System. The Popular
Veto is, in my view, the essential antiseptic of the Constitutional
Pharmacopeia.
_To put it with brutal plainness, I desire the Referendum in order to
free us from the evils of log-rolling and other exigencies of the kind
which Walt Whitman grouped under the general formula of "the insolence
of elected persons."_
I am told by my horrified Radical friends that my proposal is
politically odious--a Tory device that would stop all reforms. This I
doubt. But if it is really the Will of the People that we should not
have reforms, then we must do without them. Till we can convert the Will
of the People, we must abide by it. Anyway, I have always thought this
objection (which, by the way, is not, as Artemus Ward would say, "writ
sarkastic") an exceedingly illuminating fact. It shows how skin-deep is
the democratic principle in the minds of many men who think themselves
strong Radicals. They do not really believe in submitting to the Will of
the People. They want to do what they think is good for the People, but
they have no true sense of freedom. They do not realise that if you are
to give a man true freedom, you must inevitably give him the right to do
wrong as well as the right to do right. If you do not do that, he is no
freeman, but merely a virtuous slave--a creature, as Dryden said, "tied
up from doing ill." For such compulsory freedom I have no use. I want to
convert people, not to force them, or cajole them. Of course, I cannot
banish force altogether, because if the Will of the Majority is not
obeyed, we shall never arrive anywhere. We shall spend our time in
fruitless and so futile discussions. What we can avoid by the Poll of
the People is coercion by the minority. Curiously enough, the minority,
_teste_ Lenin, seem to have no sentimental objection to coercion.
They fly to it at once. As a rule, however, the show of power is quite
enough when the will of the majority is expressed. So great is the
impact of its declaration that men will not fight against it.
Having got so far, a great many of my readers will, no doubt, rub their
eyes and say, "Why on earth is this man letting forth this torrent of
rather obvious, well-known, elementary, political stuff? It might do for
a Fourth Form in a public school, or for a lecture on the duties of
persons on the new Register of Electors, but one really thought that the
adult citizen had got beyond this sort of thing."
I apologise humbly for being so elementary; but, after all, I have an
excuse. It seems to me that the real danger of the moment is minority
rule. Therefore, though all I have said may be condemned as unoriginal,
I hold it worthwhile to bring people's minds back to the fact that they
are in danger of minority rule, in spite of the fact that they have the
very strongest moral reasons for refusing to be ruled by a minority.
Perhaps some of us have not yet observed that in almost all countries
the so-called Labour Parties are copying the brutal frankness of Lenin
and Trotsky and saying openly that it is only the Proletariat, or, as
the wiser of them put it, the manual workers who have the right to
decide in what direction the Ship of State shall be steered, and how she
shall be worked on the voyage. Now, though I have no desire to
substitute any other section of the community for the manual workers,
and hold most strongly that such workers have as great a right as
University professors, or members of the Stock Exchange, or even members
of the bureaucracy, to say how we are to be governed, I will never admit
that they have a prerogative right to rule, and that I and other non-
manual workers have only the right to obey. That is, however, the
Proletarian claim. The so-called capitalist or bourgeois is, in effect,
to be outlawed.
In such a context I cannot help thinking of the carman and Uncle Joseph
in _The Wrong Box_. Uncle Joseph makes a remark about the lower
classes, to which the carman replies, "Who are the lower classes? You
are the lower classes yourself!" I claim an inalienable right to be
regarded as one of the people, and I do not mean, if I can help it, to
have that right taken away from me, either by a Cæsarian Dictator, an
Oligarchy of manual workers, a Federation of Trade Unions, Combined
Guild Socialists, or a Soviet of Proletarians.
I will yield anything to the members of these Societies in their
capacity of citizens possessing each the same rights as mine, but I will
yield nothing to them as the possessors of privilege. I hope I shall not
be considered arrogant when I say that I am sure that in the maintenance
of this view I shall find myself with the majority both in England and
in America. But, of course, the rub is, shall we be able to awaken the
Will of the Majority? May not a group of subtle and skilful demagogues,
acting with the manual workers' Oligarchy or the Soviet of Proletarians,
contrive to prevent me and my fellows in the majority coming together?
That, I admit, is a real danger, and that is why I want to amend our
Constitution in such a way as to place in the hands of the People
themselves a right of veto over the work of the House of Commons. I want
legislation of a vital description referred to a Poll of the People.
Needless to say, I do not want to see every petty Bill referred to the
people, but I do want all laws affecting great issues to obtain the
popular sanction. Let Bills be discussed and threshed out in Parliament,
and then put to the people with this question, "Do you or do you not
desire that this Act shall come into operation? Those in favour of the
Act will mark their papers 'Yes'; those against it will mark their
papers 'No.'" In my opinion, we shall not be safe from minority rule
until we get this acknowledgment of the right of the people to say the
final word. Let us loyally obey the will of the majority, but let us be
sure that it is the majority.
I have been at pains to make my position clear on the point of
Democracy, but being a whole-hearted believer in the Democratic
principle does not, of course, prevent one having strong views on
specific and particular points of policy, or having affinities with
particular schools of political thought. By inclination and conviction I
belong to the Moderates. Whether they are called Independents, or Whigs,
or men of the Left Centre, or Anti-revolutionaries, does not greatly
matter. I prefer the Whig variety when the Whigs were at their best,
that is, in the days of the Revolution of 1688, the days of Halifax and
Somers. No doubt the Whigs, like every other party, became corrupted by
too easy and too prolonged possession of power, for power, when it is
too easily attained and too securely held, is a great corrupter. Lord
Halifax gives a description of The Trimmer, by which term he meant, of
course, not a man of vacillation or timidity, but the man who
deliberately "trims" the boat of State and endeavours to keep her on an
even keel. When he sees that there are too many people, or too much
cargo, on one side, with the result that the boat is heeling over, he
trims her by throwing his weight, or his portmanteaus, to the other
side. The trimmer does not want to stop the progress of the boat, but he
wants her progress to be safe and not risky. He does not object to
things being done, but he does object to them being done in a wrong way,
or in an ineffective way. But, though the true Whig is a man of
compromise, he is not afraid of working for specific objects of which he
approves, in company with people who perhaps disagree with him on
fundamentals. He makes no lepers in politics, except of those who favour
corruption and demoralisation; but will work honestly for a good cause
with any honest man, no matter what his abstract opinions. For example,
I have always loved the old saying about the Whigs and the Republicans.
The Whig leader says to the Radical extremist, "You want to go the whole
way to Windsor. We want to go only half-way; but, at any rate, we can
keep together as far as Hounslow."
The mention of Monarchy suggests a word or two about my own personal
position on a point which, though not now of practical importance, may
conceivably become so in the near future. I am one of those people who
might without error be described as a theoretical Republican and a
practical Constitutional Monarchist. I feel that in theory nobody could
in these days set up an hereditary Constitutional Monarchy. At the same
time, there are a great number of practical advantages in a limited and
Constitutional Monarchy, and when it exists only fools and pedants would
get rid of it. We possess, in fact, all the advantages of a Republic and
also all the advantages of a Monarchy, and these are by no means small.
In a word, I have always agreed with Burke on this matter. Burke,
quoting from Bolingbroke, says somewhere--I forget where for the
moment, but I think in one of his Speeches in the House of Commons--that
he prefers a Monarchy to a Republic for the following reason: "It is
much easier to engraft the advantages of a Republic upon a Monarchy than
it is to engraft the advantages of a Monarchy upon a Republic." That is
obviously true, though I admit that the drafters of the American
Constitution made an attempt--in some ways very successful--to implant
some of the advantages of a Monarchy upon their Republic. The reason
behind the aphorism of "Burke out of Bolingbroke" is obvious. The stock
on which the graft is made is not the thing which you wish to fructify.
It is the inactive base. Constitutional Monarchy is just the stock you
want. In the first place, it is permanent--that is, its roots are in the
ground. But though the stock does not need to be changed, you can change
and renew your graft as much and as often as you like. You get through
the Monarchy stability and continuity, and you can make as much or as
little of your Monarch as occasion requires. If he is a specially
vicious or untrustworthy man, you can get rid of him. If he is an
imbecile, you can, have a Regency. If he is a nonentity, you can,
through the Constitutional principle that the King reigns but does not
govern, see that your system is not interfered with. If, on the other
hand, the King is a sensible man with a high sense of public duty and of
fine personal character, as, for example, the present occupant of the
Throne, there gradually grows up a power and influence in the State
which is of the very greatest use. The King gets for the whole nation a
position analogous to that which the permanent official gets in a great
Department of State. He has not the power of the Secretary of State, but
his knowledge and experience give him immense weight. In a word, a
monarch, after fifteen or twenty years of experience, in which he had
seen Ministries go up and down, parties blossom and wither, develops an
instinct for government which is very valuable. He becomes an ideal
adviser for his advisers.
I well remember being immensely struck by the emergence of this point of
view in the speech which Lord Salisbury made in the House of Lords on
the death of Queen Victoria. Without exactly using the phrase, he
described how the Queen advised her advisers. He spoke of the occasions
on which the Queen had tendered her admonitions to the Cabinet, and went
on to say that the Queen knew the English people so thoroughly and so
sympathetically, and had such an instinct for interpreting their wishes,
that it was always with grave anxiety and doubt that her Ministers
refrained from taking her advice or finally decided to disregard her
warnings on some specific matter of policy, which involved possibilities
of a clash with public opinion.
No one who has studied the law of the Constitution and the history of
its growth can but feel a kind of instinctive awe for the happy series
of accidents, tempered by human wisdom, which has given us the
Constitution we possess. Under the Act of Settlement and the various
Declaratory Statutes regulating the powers of the Monarch and
promulgated at the time of the Revolution of 1688, for example, "The
Bill of Rights," we have a crowned Republic with a royal and hereditary
President. We talk about the King being Sovereign "by Divine Right" and
"by the Grace of God," but, of course, in fact, the King's title is a
purely Parliamentary one, and is derived from an Act of Parliament--an
Act of Parliament which settles the Throne upon "the heirs of the body
of the Electress Sophia," who shall join in communion with the Church of
England and who shall not be a member of the Roman Catholic Church or
intermarry with a Roman Catholic.
Therefore, when the Sovereign dies and a new Sovereign succeeds, he
succeeds in virtue of an Act of Parliament, and in no other way. He is
the choice of the people. The repeal of the Act of Settlement would put
another man in his place, and, again, an amendment of the Act of
Settlement might secure the selection of some other member of the Royal
Family, instead of the person previously designated to succeed by the
Act of Settlement.
But these, of course, are legal technicalities. The British Monarchy is
an early example of Whiggism. The theory may be pedantic, or, if you
will, ridiculous, but the result is excellent. It is a practical
working-out of the national determination, partly conscious and partly
subconscious, to obtain for our use the best features of a Monarchy and
of a Republic. This, no doubt, would horrify the acute, analytical minds
of the Latin races. Again, the philosophic Teuton would despise it as
incomprehensible. Only those possessed of the Anglo-Saxon temperament by
birth or training--that is, only English-speaking persons, whether
British or American, can appreciate fully the British political and
constitutional system. Indeed, it sometimes has the effect of producing
in foreigners a sense of desperation. Old Mirabeau, surnamed "The Friend
of Man," the father of the great Mirabeau, and a political philosopher
of no mean order, was reduced to a paroxysm of incoherent rage by the
mere contemplation of our Constitution. "Those miserable islanders do
not know, and will not know until their whole wretched system comes to
its inevitable destruction, whether they are living under a Monarchy or
a Republic, a Democracy or an Oligarchy." A wit with a penchant for the
vernacular might well reply, "That's the spirit!" It is this that will
last, while what delights and soothes the well-balanced mind of the
clear-thinking Academicians of the Constitutional Law flaunts and goes
down an unregarded thing. As Sir Thomas Browne said long ago, nations
are not governed by ergotisms (or as we should say syllogisms) but by
instinct and common sense.
Natural parts and good judgments rule the world. States are not governed
by ergotisms. Many have ruled well, who could not, perhaps, define a
commonwealth; and they who understand not the globe of the earth command
a great part of it. Where natural logick prevails not, artificial too
often faileth. Where nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly
on; and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high.
Though one may be both a Democrat and a Whig, and yet think there is no
better function for the good citizen than to trim the boat, this does
not necessarily mean that one cannot be a party politician. Party, in
spite of all the very obvious objections that can be raised against it,
is, it seems to me, absolutely necessary to representative government.
If you choose out of the body of the population a certain number of men
to rule, those men are sure to have divergent views and aims. As
Stevenson said about our railway system, "Wherever there is competition
there can also be combination." The first instinct of a body of men with
number of divergent opinions is for those who have similar or allied
aims to get together and take combined action. But the moment that has
happened you have got a party system. The party system is, indeed, first
a plain recognition of these facts, and then an organization of the
common will.
As the party system grows and intensifies, it alters its phenomena, but
its essentials are always the same. The main objection to the party
system lies in the closeness and strictness of its organisation. The
best party system is one in which the organisation is not too perfect,
and from which it is comparatively easy to break away. The really bad
party system is that in which a man is caught so tightly and becomes so
deeply involved in party loyalty, or what may be called the freemasonry
side of politics, that he grows into feeling a kind of moral obligation
to stick to his party, right or wrong. Party tends, that is, to become a
kind of horrible parody of patriotism. Oddly enough, the less clear are
the dividing-lines between parties and the less real the distinctions
between the views that they wish to carry out, the more intense the
party spirit seems to become, and the more impossible it is for the
members to break away. Though they disagree at heart with the
proceedings of their leaders and disapprove of the party's action as a
whole, they seem condemned to adhere to the platform.
I remember a luciferous story which was told to me by Colonel John Hay
to illustrate the frenzy of party. A murderer was supposed to have
entered the house of a great Republican politician and, holding a dagger
over him, to have told him that his hour was come and that he must die.
The politician tried every appeal he could think of. "Consider," he
said, "my poor wife and the misery she will feel at my death." "I am
sorry for her, but it cannot be helped. You must die." "But think of my
poor innocent children who will be left helpless orphans." "I am sorry
for them too, but you must die." "Think of the evil effect on the
country at this moment of crisis." "Yes, I know, and I am sorry; but
that cannot move me. You must die." And then came the final appeal, "But
think of the effect on the Republican Party!" Across the would-be
murderer's face came a quiver of irresolution. The dagger dropped from
his hands, and with the cry, "Good heavens! I never thought of that," he
rushed from the room.
But though this is the danger, there is, happily, no need for us to
carry the party system quite so far as that. Party discipline there must
be, but it can be kept well within bounds. Nothing is more wholesome
than for party leaders to know that if they push things too far and too
often ask their followers to condone doubtful acts, their followers will
leave them. Clearly, as the Irishman said of the truth, this spirit of
independence must not be dragged out on every paltry occasion. It must,
however, always remain in the background as a possibility, and, what is
more even those who do not themselves revolt would be well advised to
prevent extreme penal measures being applied within the party to a man
who breaks away on a particular point.
For myself, curiously enough, I never felt any dislike of party, and
was, indeed, I fondly believe, designed by Providence for a good and
loyal party man, with no inconvenient desire to assert my own views. A
perverse fate, however, has forced me twice in my life to break with my
party, or, to put it more correctly, it has twice happened to me that
the party to which I belonged adopted the policy that I had always
deemed it essential to oppose. To begin with, I left the Liberal Party,
to which my family had always belonged ever since the time of the
Commonwealth, over Mr. Gladstone's sudden conversion to Home Rule and
the abandonment of the Legislative Union. Whether I was right or wrong I
am not going to discuss here. At any rate I followed Lord Hartington,
Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. John Bright, the Duke of Argyll, and a host of
other good Liberals and Whigs and became, first a Liberal-Unionist, and
then an unhyphenated Unionist, and a loyal supporter of Lord Salisbury,
Mr. Balfour, and their administration.
In the Unionist Party, which has become quite as thoroughly Democratic
as its opponent, I had hoped to live and die, but unfortunately, there
came the one other question upon which I felt it my duty to take as
strong a line as I did in opposing the very injurious and unjust form of
Home Rule which first Mr. Gladstone, and then Mr. Asquith, advocated.
People who have forgotten, or who are not aware of the actual
conditions, may think it strange that I, who proclaim myself so strongly
in favour of obeying the Will of the Majority, should have become so
strong a Unionist. A little reflection will show, however, that not only
was there nothing contradictory in my attitude, but that it was natural
and inevitable from my democratic premises. I held the Union with
Ireland to be as much an incorporating union as the union between the
several States of the American Republic. I held that the Will of the
Majority must prevail within the United Kingdom. The area in which the
votes were to be counted was, in a word, to be the whole national area,
and not a small portion of it. As I have argued for the last thirty-five
years, in public and in private, and as I still feel, the Home Rule
Question is and always must be a question of area.
The area which I took for the decision, and which I still think was the
right area to give the decision, was the United Kingdom. If any other
were adopted, you might very soon fritter away the whole United Kingdom.
Again, if we are to make a great financial present, as the Irish claim
we must do, from the taxpayer of the centre to the detached fragments of
the circumference, the process becomes a tragedy. If Ireland may go at
the wish of her electors, so, of course, may Scotland, and so may Wales,
each with their subsidy from England. Next, outlying portions of England
may want to break away. The result would be a veritable apotheosis of
political fissiparousness.
In spite of this, I admit that you cannot fight a political battle on
the principle of the _reductio ad absurdum_. The people of England
might hold that for special reasons Ireland would have a right to
separate, but that this must not be a precedent to be applied to the
rest of Britain. Assuming, however, that Ireland shall have exceptional
treatment, I saw, as of course, did many other people, for I am not so
foolish as to make any claim to seeing further than my neighbours, that
the question of area again controlled the event. Ireland was not a
homogeneous country. There were two Irelands--the Ireland of the North
and the Ireland of the South, the Ireland of the Celt and of the Teuton,
and, above all, the Ireland in which Roman Catholics formed a large
majority of the population, and the Ireland in which the Protestants
formed the local majority. In a word, the twenty-six counties of the
South and the six counties of the North differed in every respect.
Neither could justly be put in control of the other; though both might
be united through a Union with England, Scotland, and Wales.
From these premises I drew certain inferences, which I believe to be
entirely sound. One was that you could not say that Ireland, as a whole,
might claim to break away from the United Kingdom, and then refuse the
claim of the Six-County Area to break away from the rest of Ireland.
Arguments against the diversion and disruption of Ireland would be
exactly the same as those used by the Unionists to forbid the
destruction of the United Kingdom. Feeling this, as I did, when Mr.
Gladstone introduced his second Home Rule Bill, I took an early
opportunity of going over to Belfast and ascertaining the facts on the
spot. I was confirmed in my view that there could be no solution of the
Irish Question which would be either just, or reasonable, or efficient,
that did not recognise the existence of the two Irelands--which did not,
in effect, say to the Nationalists, "If you insist on your pound of
flesh and break up an arrangement which has done so much for Ireland as
a whole, that is, the Legislative Union, you must also yield the pound
of flesh to the people of North-East Ulster, a community which does not
want the United Kingdom to be partitioned, any more than you want
Ireland to be partitioned." In this faith I have remained. I believe
that the breaking-up of the Legislative Union with Ireland was bad for
England, bad for Ireland, and bad for the Empire; but if it should be
the Will of the People of the United Kingdom, then that Will could only
be equitably applied by a recognition of the existence of the two
Irelands. Yet this simple fact Liberal party politicians like Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Asquith, and their followers either absolutely ignored,
or else sapiently admitted that it was a serious difficulty and then
passed on to the purchase of the Southern Irish vote for other purposes!
Perhaps it will be said, "But you are getting away from your main
premise--the Will of the Majority. If it should be the will of the
Majority of the United Kingdom not to recognise the existence of the two
Irelands, you are bound, according to your theory, to submit to that
view." I admit that I may be bound, but I do not believe, and never have
believed, that the people of North-East Ulster are bound. You can turn
Northern Ireland out of the Union if you will, but you have no moral
right to place them under the dominance to which they object--the
dominance of a Dublin Parliament. To do that is to call into existence
that rare but inalienable, right, "the sacred right of insurrection"
against intolerable injustice.
As far as I know, no State has ever yet seriously claimed the right to
deprive any portion of itself of the political status belonging to its
inhabitants, except when compelled to do so by foreign conquerors. That
is why I, though a Majority Democrat, have always felt that the people
of Belfast and of North-East Ulster were loyal, and not disloyal,
citizens, when they declared that if they were to be turned out of the
United Kingdom they had an inalienable right to declare that they would
not be placed under a Dublin Parliament. The Parliament of the United
Kingdom, of which their representative formed an integral part, though
it had a right to make laws for them, had no right to hand them over to
the untender mercies of the Southern Irish. _Delegatus non potest
delegare_--the delegate cannot delegate. But the representatives of
the United Kingdom are delegates for the people of the United Kingdom.
They have a right to govern it, but they cannot hand over their power of
government to some other body. My contention is triumphantly supported
by what happened during the attempt, happily unsuccessful, to break up
the United States of America. When Virginia seceded from the Union, the
people of what might be called the Ulster Virginia, a group of counties
in the west of Virginia, declared that the Richmond Legislature had no
right to deprive them of their inalienable right of citizenship in the
American Republic. Therefore they not only refused to secede, but, as
they were physically unable to control Virginia as a whole, they formed
themselves into the Loyal State of West Virginia, just as the Ulster
people were prepared, if they had been forced out of the Union by Mr.
Asquith's Bill, to set up a State for themselves.
At the end of the Civil War, the legal pedants of Washington were
inclined to say that, right or wrong on the merits, the people of West
Virginia had not acted legally in setting up their State, and that
therefore, when the Peace came, they must be put back into Virginia and
under the Richmond Government. The self-made State of West Virginia
naturally objected at this intolerable and unjust decision. When the
matter came before Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet, that great and wise man
acted with a firmness not outdone even in the list of his magnificent
achievements. He would hear nothing of the technical pedantries and
legal sophistries submitted to him. West Virginia, he declared, must
remain detached from Virginia, and it remains to this day a State of the
Union. Here are the concluding words of the memorandum which Mr. Lincoln
circulated to his Cabinet:--
Can this Government stand, if it indulges constitutional constructions
by which men in open rebellion against it are to be accounted, man for
man, the equals of those who maintain their loyalty to it?... If so,
their treason against the Constitution enhances their constitutional
value.... It is said, the devil takes care of his own. Much more should
a good spirit--the spirit of the Constitution and the Union--take care
of its own. I think it cannot do less and live.... We can scarcely
dispense with the aid of West Virginia in this struggle; much less can
we afford to have her against us, in Congress and in the field. Her
brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of
life and death. They have been true to the Union under very severe
trials. We have so acted as to justify their hopes, and we cannot fully
retain their confidence and co-operation if we seem to break faith with
them. The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure
made expedient by a war is no precedent for times of peace. It is said
that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only
because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is
still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and
secession in favour of the Constitution.
I shall never forget the profound impression made upon me when I first
read those words. They gave what to me was the support of the highest
moral and political authority to the view at which I had arrived
instinctively. I had, as was natural, some doubts about my position, for
I saw that my theories might lead to encouraging resistance to the
apparent Will of the Majority. But after finding a supporter in Lincoln,
I had no more doubts or fears.
I have dwelt so long on this matter because I want to show what, rightly
or wrongly, was my guiding principle:--I objected to Home Rule as bad
for the Empire, bad for the United Kingdom, and bad in an even extremer
degree for Ireland herself. If, however, it should be determined that
some measure of Home Rule must be passed, then the existence of the two
Irelands must be recognised in any action which should be determined
upon. Therefore, when the support which the Unionist Party determined on
giving to Mr. Lloyd George at the end of the War made some form of Home
Rule seem almost inevitable, I strongly advocated the division of
Ireland as the only way of avoiding a civil war in which the merits
would be with Northern Ireland. I would personally have preferred to see
the Six-County Area incorporated with England and become one or two
English counties. As that seemed for various reasons unobtainable, the
setting up of the Northern Legislature and the Northern State became the
inevitable compromise.
That accomplished, I should have preferred to see Southern Ireland
detached from the Empire. I have no desire to be a fellow-citizen with
Mr. de Valera, Mr. Michael Collins, or even Mr. Griffiths, or, again,
with the hierarchy of the Roman Church in Ireland. They have perfectly
different views of the crime of murder from mine. I believe murder to be
the greatest of crimes against the community, and, granted that we
should give up any attempt to teach Ireland better, I would rather
detach her altogether from the Empire. I hold that to be included in the
British Empire is one of the highest and greatest privileges obtainable
by any community, and I am not going down on my knees to beg an
unwilling Southern Ireland to enjoy this privilege.
Further, I hold that if we let the Southern Irish go, we have a duty to
the Protestants and Roman Catholic loyalists, of whom, of course, there
are a very great many in the South. We have no right to force them to
forfeit their citizenship of the British Empire. They must be allowed to
come away from the South with full compensation for their disturbance if
they so desire. If circumstances force you to denationalise a certain
part of your country, you must give the loyal inhabitants an opportunity
to leave, and as far as possible must not allow their material interests
to suffer. It would be perfectly easy to have exempted all persons in
the South who were loyal to Britain and to have put the burden of their
migration where it ought to have fallen--that is, on the Southern
enemies of England and Scotland who, by their policy, had made human
life for the Protestants and Loyalists a veritable hell.
If the South had refused to pay, we should ourselves have taken on the
burden, and imposed a duty on agricultural produce coming from the South
of Ireland into England sufficient to find the interest on a loan raised
to compensate the Southern refugees. That would be a perfectly possible
way, a very easy fiscal transaction.
I am not going to argue further whether these views on the Irish problem
are _per se_ right or wrong. I can only adopt with variation the
party-politician's peroration: "These, gentlemen, are my principles; if
they don't suit, they can't be altered."
CHAPTER XXVII
MY POLITICAL OPINIONS (_Continued_)
I have described how the policy of Home Rule adopted by the Liberal
Party made me, as it did so many other people in the United Kingdom,
first a Liberal-Unionist and then a Unionist without a hyphen.
Unfortunately, however, the Unionist Party did not for very long offer
me a quiet and secure political haven. Like the Duke of Devonshire, whom
I always regarded during his life as my leader in politics, I had to
weigh my anchor during the tempest caused by Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of
Tariff Reform, and then seek safety in the ocean of independence. I am
not going at length into the merits of the fiscal question, except to
say that, though it was the only point on which I differed from the bulk
of the Unionist Party, it was, unfortunately, the one other matter of
policy in which I could not play the good party man and bow my head to
the decision of the Party as a whole. I felt as strongly about the
Tariff Reform as I did about the dissolution of the United Kingdom.
Rightly or wrongly again, my opposition was based very much on the same
essential grounds. I believed that the policy of Tariff Reform, if
carried out, would end by breaking up instead of uniting the British
Empire, which I desired above all things to maintain "in health and
strength long to live." I held that to give up Free Trade would do
immense damage to our economic position here and intensify our social
conditions by impoverishing the capitalist as well as the manual worker;
and, finally, that there was very great danger of any system of
Protection introducing corruption into our public life. If four or five
words, or sometimes even a single word and a comma, added to or taken
away from the schedule of a Tariff Act can give a man or group of men a
monopoly and tax half the nation in order to make them rich, you have
given men too personal a reason for the use of their votes.
I can summarise my position in regard to Tariff Reform very easily. I am
no pedant about Protection, and if it could be shown that the security
of an island kingdom like the United Kingdom could only be made complete
by Protection in certain matters, I should be perfectly willing to vote
for measures to give that security. In other words, I would have voted
for what has been called "a state of siege" tariff. I should have
regarded it as an economic loss which must be borne just as must the
charges of the Army and Navy, in order to ensure the safety and welfare
of the realm.
But Mr. Chamberlain and his followers, though there was an occasional
word or two about national security, did not base their appeal to the
nation on the ground of national security. They based it on quite
different grounds. They told us in effect, "If you want to maintain and
develop your industries, if you want to prevent them gradually dying
out, if you want to get the greatest amount of employment for
workingmen, and also for capital,--in a word, if you want to increase
the wealth of the nation, you must go in for Protection, _i.e._,
Tariff Reform." Tariff Reform thus became a national "get-rich-quick"
political war-cry. That, to my mind, was an appeal which had to be
counter-attacked at once as the most dangerous delusion from which any
people could suffer, and a delusion specially perilous to a country like
England--a nation living, and bound to live, by trade and barter rather
than by agriculture or the satisfaction of her own wants. England is a
country to which the encouragement of every form of exchange is vital.
But you cannot encourage exchanges under a system of Protection.
Protection sets out to limit Exchange by forbidding half the exchanges
of the world, that is, exchanges between persons of different
nationalities and different locations.
If your object is to increase the national wealth, you must be a Free
Trader. There is no other way. If, however, your object is national
security--if you say, "I would rather see the nation safe than wealthy,"
then I fully admit there is a good case, not merely in theory, but very
possibly in practice, for a certain amount of Protection. The existence
of arsenals in which rifles, explosives, and other material of war can
be made are obviously necessary, and no nation could safely see such
essential industries depart from these shores on the ground that we
could more economically make something else to exchange for rifles,
guns, ammunition, and armour-plate made elsewhere. Again, since the
existence of dye industries is so closely connected with the manufacture
of explosives, I am perfectly willing to admit that it may be necessary
to give Protection in this special matter. Again, it is possible, though
I think it less clear than is generally supposed, that there may be one
or two key industries which the experience of the War shows us it is
worth while to maintain here, even if a subsidy is required for such
maintenance. Finally, I think the experience of the War proved that we
must see to it that our ability to feed ourselves, though it may be at
short commons, for at least six months of the year, ought to receive due
consideration.
I am as much opposed to war and as much in favour of peace as my
neighbours, but I do not want my descendants some day when called upon
to resist a threatened wrong to have to decide on peace, not on its
merits but because they are at the mercy of an international bully; and
remember we are not going to get rid of international bullies till we
have got educated and reasonable democracies established throughout the
world.
The world will be safe only when rid of populations so servile by nature
that they are willing to allow themselves to be governed by men like the
ex-German Emperor. True education and true democracy are the best
anodynes to war.
But, as I have said, Mr. Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform Leaguers,
though, of course, they occasionally spoke about security, really made
their appeal on the old Protectionist ground that "Day by day we get
richer and richer"--provided we limit our exchanges instead of extending
them. When the Tariff Reform agitation had made me, as I have said, find
safety in sea room with men like the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Cromer,
Lord George Hamilton, Mr. Arthur Elliott, Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Robert
Cecil, and a number of very distinguished _Conservative_ Unionists
was well as _Liberal_ Unionists, I experienced the full disadvantages,
or rather the weakness, of independence in politics. We Unionist
Free Traders, as we called ourselves, were not really strong
enough to organise a party for ourselves, nor, indeed, did we think it
advisable to do so, for, except in the matter of Tariff Reform, we were
strongly opposed to the Liberal and Free Trade Party, and strongly in
sympathy with the bulk of the Unionist Party. In a word, we Unionist
Free Traders could not form a whole-hearted alliance with either of the
two old parties. We detested the Irish policy followed by Mr. Asquith,
its truckling to the Nationalists and its apparent determination to shed
the blood of the people of Ulster, if that was necessary to force them
under a Dublin Parliament. Again, we hated, and no man more than I, the
socialistic legislation which the Asquith Government were willing to
adopt at the bidding of the Labour Party. The mixture of coercion and
cajolery which Mr. Lloyd George knew so well how to employ in his
Radical days, in order to induce the House of Commons to accept his
various measures, was particularly abhorrent to us.
It was not only the bad Irish policy of the Government, their flirtation
with Socialism, and the Marconi business, that made me strongly opposed
to Mr. Asquith's pre-War administration. I greatly disliked the foreign
policy of the Liberal Government. It was a weak and timid compromise
between half-hearted pacificism and inadequate preparation. I was
confident, as must have been anyone who kept his eyes open, that Germany
was preparing for war with this country as part of her world-policy, and
I felt it likely that as soon as the widening and deepening of the Kiel
Canal was finished, and so the effective strength of the German Fleet
doubled, the first excuse would be taken to bring on the "inevitable"
world-war. Therefore, I held that preparation for war was absolutely
necessary. Adequate preparation might indeed avert war. The German
Emperor wanted not so much war as victory, and the more we were prepared
the more we should be able to say that we would not allow the conquest
of Europe by arms, though we were quite ready to let Germany conquer by
good trading, _if she could_. The British people, as a whole, had
no jealousy of her splendid trade organisation and power of manufacture,
and nothing could ever have induced them to make an unprovoked attack on
Germany.
If we had adopted universal military service here; if we had even, as I
wanted and urged in public, kept a couple of million of rifles in store
here, ready for the improvisation of great military forces, Germany,
however anxious to strike her blow, would probably have held her hand.
We were tempting her to war by our want of preparation.
Unfortunately, Mr. Asquith and his Government, though full of anxiety
and trembling at the prospect of what might happen, came to the
disastrous decision not to make whole-hearted, but only half-hearted,
preparations. They decided that, though they would not do enough in the
way of preparation to make war impossible, they would do enough to give
an excuse to the Potsdam war-party. For the rest, they would trust to
the peace party--or alleged peace party--in Germany. In reality, there
was no such peace party, or, if there was, it was an impotent thing. The
servility of the German people rendered it quite unimportant! True
democracy may be trusted in the matter of peace. Your tyrant whether he
speaks with a popular voice, or whether he professes to be a God-given
autocrat, is always a danger.
It was the slavish spirit of the German people and their willingness,
though so intelligent and so highly organised, to let themselves be
governed by a blatant Emperor of second-class intellect, which
constituted the real danger to European peace. If Mr. Asquith had said
to the people of this country, or, indeed, to the world, "We are going
to be vigilant in our preparations till the German people have freed
themselves and so given hostages for the peace of the world," he would,
I believe, have had the support of all the best elements in English
political life. He would not have used such crude language, but he could
have made his meaning clear in courteous phrases. Instead of which, he
took a line which, in effect, encouraged France, and so Russia, to stand
up against Germany, and not to take her threats lying down, and yet did
not insure against the obligations he was, in effect, incurring.
To say that preparation, as is sometimes said, would have precipitated
war is a delusion. It might, I well believe, have precipitated it if the
preparations had been delayed till 1913, but not if they had been
undertaken, as they could have been quite easily, several years earlier,
_i.e._, after the Agadir incident and when the trend of events was
quite clear. Yet in January, 1914, Mr. Lloyd George thought it advisable
to say that we had reached a period when we could safely reduce our Army
and Navy. His speech was as provocative of war as any public utterance
recorded by history.
Finally, I had a quarrel with the Liberal Government over Mr. Lloyd
George's famous first Budget, which I thought, and still think, a
thoroughly bad measure. But even here Fate did not allow me to range
myself with my old party, the Unionists. I could not, any more than
could Lord Cromer and many other of my political Unionist Free Trade
associates, believe that it was wise from the constitutional or
conservative point of view to try and fight the so-called "People's
Budget" by invoking action in the House of Lords over a financial
matter. I think the action of the Lords was bad from the legal point of
view. I am sure it was bad from the point of view of political
convenience. The country instinctively recognised that the Lords were
indulging in a revolutionary action, and, though the English people are,
I am glad to say, not frightened by the mere word "revolution," they
have a feeling that, if revolutionary action is to be taken, it ought
never to be taken by the representatives of Constitutionalism. That is
just the kind of inappropriateness which always annoys English people.
The result, of course, was that at the inevitable General Election the
Unionists did not gain enough seats to justify their action, and
thereupon Mr. Asquith and his followers undertook in the Parliament Act
the abolition of the power of the House of Lords to insist on the people
being consulted in matters of great importance. The Lords in recent
times never claimed the veto power but only this right to see that the
country endorsed the schemes of its representatives.
Then came another break with the Unionists for me and for those who
thought like me. Lord Halsbury, Mr. Austen Chamberlain and their
followers, chiefly the right, or Tory, wing of the Unionists, were
strongly in favour of the Lords throwing out the Parliament Bill. It was
known that if the Lords did throw the Bill out, Mr. Asquith would advise
the King to create sufficient Peers (four hundred was the number
calculated to be required) to pass the measure. Though it was unpleasant
to be associated in this matter with the people who were most keen about
Mr. Lloyd George's Budget, I had not the slightest hesitation as to what
line of action I ought to take, and in The Spectator I urged with all
the strength at my command that the Unionist Party had no business to
set up as revolutionaries, which they in effect were doing by insisting
that the Bill should only be passed by the creation of four hundred
Peers. They, I urged, would appear before the public as the wreckers of
the Constitution. The result of the line I took in _The Spectator_--
a
line not supported by the rest of the Unionist Press, or, at any
rate, by only a very small section of it--was to call down a vehemence
of denunciation on my head more violent than I, accustomed as I was to
abuse from both sides, had ever before experienced. Happily, I am one of
those people who find a hot fight stimulating and amusing and who, like
Attila, love the _certaminis gaudia_, the glories and delights of a
rough-and-tumble scrap. I and _The Spectator_ were, I remember,
denounced by name by Mr. Austen Chamberlain at a banquet of Die-Hards.
Mr. Garvin in _The Observer_ abused _The Spectator_ in perfect
good faith, I admit, but with characteristic intensity. I received dire
threats from old readers of _The Spectator_, and finally I received
gifts of white feathers to show what the country Die-Hards thought of
me!
I felt quite certain, however, that not only was I right to speak my
mind, but that in the last resort the common sense of what the Anglo-
Saxon chronicler called "_miletes agresti_," and the new journalism
"the backwoodsman peers," would turn out to be not for but against
revolutionary action. And so it happened.
I did not actually go to the House of Lords to hear the debate, as I am
one of those people who confess to be easily bored by what Lord
Salisbury called "the dreary drip of dilatory declamation." I waited,
however, pen in hand, to hear the result of the division, which was not
taken till late on a Thursday night. A relative in the House had
undertaken to telephone the event to me at the earliest moment, so that
I should have plenty of time to chronicle a victory for common sense, or
deplore the first step in an ill-judged constitutional revolution. When
the telephone-bell rang and the figures of the division were given, they
showed a majority against the rejection of the Bill. It was not a large
majority, but it was sufficient, and I at once turned with a sense of
real relief to write the funeral sermon on a round in the great
political game which had been as badly played as possible by the
Unionist leaders. I am still proud to think that _The Spectator_
had taken a considerable share in preventing the crowning blunder.
Throughout the crisis I had acted in the utmost intimacy and complete
accord with Lord Cromer. He worked as hard with the Unionist chiefs in
private as I did with the rank-and-file in public.
There were several curious episodes in this fierce quarrel of which I
was cognisant; but these events, and also those connected with the
Conferences on the Home Rule Bill, which was in progress when the War
broke out, cannot be fully dealt with. In fifteen or twenty years' time
either I or my literary executors may be able to disclose that portion
of them with which I was specially concerned. Till then the memoranda
and letters in which they are set forth must remain sealed books. For
fear of misconception I ought perhaps to add that they disclose nothing
dishonourable in any sort of way to any of the participants. Instead,
they bear out Lord Melbourne's aphorism. A lady is reported to have
addressed him in the following terms: "I suppose, Lord Melbourne, that
as Prime Minister you found mankind terribly venal." "No, no, Ma'am; not
venal, only damned vain." I might, during my inspection of the Arcana of
the Constitution and my first-hand knowledge of our leading politicians,
have been inclined to vary it, "Not venal, not self-seeking-only damned
foolish, or damned blind."
Before I leave off reviewing my political views and actions, in which
there are many things which I am exceedingly sorry not to print at full
length, I desire a word or two in regard to my position towards the War.
I want to say quite plainly and clearly that, though it would be out of
place and wearisome to discuss the War and its origin here, I refuse
absolutely and entirely to apologise for the War, or to speak as if I
were ashamed of it, or of the part which, as a journalist, I played in
regard to it before it came or while it was in progress. The War was not
only necessary to secure our safety, but it was, I am as fully convinced
as ever I was, a righteous war. Unless we had been willing to run the
risk of being enslaved by Germany, or, if you will, unless we had been
prepared to fight for our lives and liberties at the most terrible
disadvantage, we were bound, both by reasons of safety and by reasons of
honour, to prevent France being destroyed by Germany. If after all that
had happened in the ten years before the war we had remained neutral,
France and Russia would have felt, and with reason, that we had deserted
them. It is, therefore, quite possible that, if Germany, after a rapid
initial success, had proposed very generous terms, they might have
patched up a peace at our expense, and in effect told Germany that she
might have as much of the perfidious British Empire as she required.
Germany would almost certainly have been willing to agree to such an
arrangement. Her rulers, like Napoleon, knew that they could not rule
Europe unless the naval supremacy of the British Empire was destroyed.
In a word, it was quite clear that if we, France, and Russia did not
hang _together_, we should hang separately.
That was the argument of convenience. The argument based on honour and
justice was stronger still. The notion of allowing Belgium and France to
be exposed to the risk of destruction while we watched in fancied
security was absolutely intolerable. We could not say to France, though
some people actually thought it possible, "This is not our quarrel. You
must decide between Russia and Germany as best you can. We refuse to
fight Russia's battles; though we would fight yours if you were wantonly
attacked." But that was as foolish as it was selfish. France and Russia
were bound to support each other against the foe they found so potent
and so menacing;--a foe willing, nay, eager, to support that "negation
of God erected into a system" called the Austrian Empire.
To be concise, France was bound in honour not to leave Russia in the
lurch when she was attacked, and we were also bound in honour not to
desert France. We had pursued, in the past, a policy which directly
encouraged France, not only to make a stand against Germany, but to
commit herself more and more to her Russian Allies and to regard,
indeed, that alliance as part of the security of the world, part of the
insurance against a German domination of Europe, part of the joint peace
premium. First to back up France, as we did at Agadir and afterwards,
and then suddenly to step aside with the cry of "Angela, there is
danger. I leave thee," would have been so base that, had we perpetrated
it, we could never have recovered our national self-respect. But self-
respect is as essential to the welfare of nations as it is to the
welfare of the individual.
The War was a terrible evil, and we have suffered very greatly, but I
refuse absolutely to be apologetic in regard to our method of carrying
it through. On the contrary, I think there is nothing in human history
more magnificent than the way in which people in the British Empire
steadily kept to their purpose and were willing to make any and every
sacrifice to maintain the right. Here I appeal to a contemporary
judgment which happens to be as impartial as the judgment of any future
historian is likely to be. I mean the judgment passed on us by the firm
if friendly hand of the American Ambassador, Mr. Page. Wonderful and
deeply moving are his descriptions of the way in which the English
people of all classes and of all political creeds and temperaments
withstood the shock of the declaration of war and of its first dreadful
impact. Speaking generally his descriptions of the years '14, '15, and
'16--"Years which reeled beneath us, terrible years"--are as great and
as memorable as anything ever recorded in human history. As a picture of
a people undergoing the supreme test and seen in the fullest intimacy
and absolutely at first-hand, it is equal to anything even in
Thucydides. A noble passion inspires and consecrates the narration--
vibrant with the sense not only of sorrow but also of exaltation and
complete understanding. It was the happiest of accidents that one of our
own race, and blood, and language should have been able to view the
nation's sacrifice as he viewed it, and yet be able to speak as could
only a man who was not actually participating in the sacrifice, and was
not actually part of the nation. An American citizen of pure English
language and lineage, like Mr. Page, could say things, and say them
outright, which no Englishman could have said. The Englishman would have
been checked and tongue-tied by the sense that he was plucking laurels
for his own brow. _Page's immortal letters--I am using the words with
sober deliberation and not in any inflated rhetoric--stand as the best
and greatest national monument for Britain's dead and Britain's
living_.
That noble attitude of the British people, that gallantry without pose
or self-glorification, that valour without vain glory, that recognition
that pity and truth must be shared by the conqueror with the conquered
all were maintained by our people in war as in peace. There were tears
for the sons of the enemy as well as for our own. In spite of endless
provocations we kept our humanity and so our honour.
If our battle spirit became us, our spirit since then has been as worthy
of the best that is in mankind. It is true that while making the Peace,
we said and did many foolish things, both as far as the rest of the
world is concerned and also in regard to our own interests; but we have
a perfect right to say that all was done in honour and nothing in
malice, in selfishness, or in that worst of all crimes and follies, the
spirit of revenge. There is no justice in revenge. It is a hateful and
premeditated negation of justice, the creature of ignoble panic, and not
of faith and courage. It is pure evil.
I even refuse to bemoan the legacies of the War. The War has left us in
poverty and in peril. But even though that poverty and that peril are
largely the result of the mismanagement of those to whom we have
entrusted the work of reconstruction, I am not going to sit down by the
international roadside and rave about it. The way in which that social
peril and that poverty have been borne by the vast majority of our
population has been wholly admirable. I am optimist enough to see and
salute a nobility of sacrifice in all classes which to my mind is
earnest that the future of our half of the English-speaking race--of the
other half no man need have any doubts--will be as great as was its
past.
Could anything have been better than the way in which the rich, opulent,
well-to-do classes of this country have taken the tremendous revolution
in their lives and fortunes accomplished by the War? The economic and
social change has been as great and almost as shattering as those
wrought by any social revolution in the world's history. Yet they have
hardly caused a murmur among those who have had to endure them.
The great country-houses of England, only some eight years ago its
architectural and social glory, are passing rapidly out of the hands of
their old owners. Some are destined to fall actually into ruin, some to
become institutions, schools, hospitals, or asylums, and a few--but only
a few--to pass into the hands of the new possessors of wealth--a body
much smaller in numbers than is usually represented. There are thousands
of families whose members, once rich, have now passed into a condition
so straitened that only ten years ago they would have regarded it as
utterly insupportable--a position to which actual extinction was
preferable. Yet, Heaven be praised! this great social revolution has not
caused one drop of blood, and very little bitterness or complaint.
Coming, as it has come, as the result of a great national sacrifice, it
has been accepted with a patriotism as great as that which accepted the
sacrifice of the War. English people of all classes are tenacious of
their rights, and one may feel certain that the class of which I am
speaking, if they felt an injustice was being done them, would not have
forfeited their property without a struggle. Of such civil strife,
however, there has never been a thought. In a word, our revolution has
come in the guise of a patriotic duty and sacrifice.
It was accompanied, strange to tell, by a sudden, and therefore
unsettling, temporary great increase of material prosperity among the
poorer part of the community. The sacrifices, moral and physical, though
not material, made by the manual workers were, though not greater, every
bit as great as those made by the rich and the well-to-do. They were
borne by the working-classes with what one must admit showed, in one
sense, an even greater nobility of conduct. Education made matters
explicable to the prosperous, and especially to their women, whereas the
greater part of the women of the manual workers, and a very large part
of the men, had to take the reasons for the War wholly on trust. They
had not been sufficiently forewarned of the danger, and the War burst
upon them literally as a horrible surprise--a surprise which so soon
meant for the women the sacrifice of all they held most dear.
Though there seems a likelihood that proportionately the material
sacrifice may remain less great for the manual workers than for those
who are above them in the economic scale, the loss caused by the world's
destitution is bound to be great, even though it will not be
revolutionary. Still, I am convinced that it will be met with equal
courage, provided our rulers, through panic or through false ideas of
expediency, do not feed the manual workers of the nation on a diet of
mere flattery, sophistry, and opportunism, but rather instruct and
inspire them to play a worthy part.
But, though I see how many and how great are the dangers that surround
us, I believe that as a nation and an Empire we shall pass through the
fiery furnace with unsinged hair. It has been said that the Almighty
must favour the British Empire, for again and again some event which it
is difficult to regard as a mere accident has saved it from destruction,
or turned its necessity to glorious gain. I find no difficulty in
agreeing and also have no desire to apologise for calling it the Will of
God that our nation shall not perish. I admit, however, it would be more
in the philosophic fashion to describe it as the resultant of the Life-
Urge, or of "the Something behind the Somebody"--a formula which is
possibly destined to take the place of Matthew Arnold's more polished
"stream of tendency making for righteousness."
But when I say this of the new voices, I hope that no one will imagine
that I speak cynically or even in sympathetic irony. It may well be that
those who use the phrase "Life-Urge" in reality mean very nearly what I
mean when I speak of "the Grace of Heaven." They, indeed, may be more
honest and more sincere than I am in their reticence of language and in
their determination not to deceive themselves, even by an iota. Their
fierce preservation of the citadel of agnosticism, till they are sure,
may make them unhappy and hard-pressed in spirit. It can never make them
ignoble.
For myself, I am convinced that there is no better way of serving God,
or of acknowledging the greatness of the issues of life and death than
that splendid devotion to truth which will not allow even the minutest
dilution,--which demands, not only the truth, and the whole truth, but
nothing but the truth. Who dare blame these young "Knights of the Holy
Ghost" who make their Gospel a demand for an absolute purity, who ask
for the thing which has no admixture?
Does not our Lord Himself tell us, "_Blessed are the pure in hearty
for they shall see God_"? And does not purity of heart mean no mixed
motives, no substitutes, no easy concessions, no compromises, no
arrangements, but only the truth and the light, single and undefiled?
But I fear I may seem to be losing touch with that of which I speak, or
claiming some sort of monopoly of Divine guidance for my race and
country. Nothing could be further from my thought. All that I do is to
cherish the belief that the trend of events is towards moral and
spiritual progress, and that the chief instrument of salvation will be
the English-speaking race. In speaking thus, as a lover or a child, I am
certainly not pointing to the road of selfishness. If the English-
speaking kin is to take the lead and to bring mankind from out the
shadow and once again into the light, it can only be through care, toil,
and sacrifice-things little consistent with national selfishness or
national pride.
CHAPTER XXVIII
UNWRITTEN CHAPTERS
The writing of memoirs is a pleasant exercise. At any rate, I have found
it so. It has led me back to many curious and delightful things which I
had wholly forgotten. They came unbidden in the train of events which I
had always remembered "in principle" and was at pains to evoke in
detail. But though the process has obvious advantages, it has had one
drawback. My recollections, and still more my reflections, and what I
may call my self-comments Conscious and Subconscious, have been so many
that at times I have felt like a man struggling in a mighty torrent.
The result has been that, though I have written more than I intended to
write, I have not covered anything like the amount of ground which I
hoped to cover. I am left staring at a list of unwritten chapters. A
list as long as that of those chapters included in my book or else
eliminated lest the volume should swell to the size of the London
Directory or to one of those portentous catalogues which Mr. Bernard
Quaritch used to put forth in the days when I first began to love books,
not merely for their contents, but as books.
The titles of the unwritten chapters have, however, so fascinated me,
and seem so necessary to my life and, therefore, to my book, that I
must, at any rate, put their names on record, together with some faint
indication of their nature, lest my readers should think there is some
deep reason why I do not touch them. It is, I feel, only natural that
people should think the worst of an Autobiographer.
The unwritten chapter which I most deeply regret is that chapter on the
War Hospital which we opened in the house in which I am writing--a
Hospital which my wife, though I suppose I ought not to say this,
managed, in spite of ill-health and many difficulties, with
extraordinary success. Though physically disabled, she, for nearly five
years, maintained practically single-handed, the organisation and
direction of a well-equipped surgical and medical institution in a house
not built for that purpose, though, oddly enough, one which in certain
ways lent itself to hospital purposes. The Newlands Corner Hospital had
an average of forty beds.
Four and a half years is a long time to be out of one's house. It is a
still longer time in which to turn your home into an institution and
yourself into a matron. Altogether some eight or nine hundred men passed
through the hospital. The doctors of the Royal Herbert Hospital,
Woolwich, with which we were affiliated, and Colonel Simpson, the
A.D.M.S. of that Hospital,--a man of marked ability in his profession
and with a natural gift for administration,--soon found out that
Newlands air and Newlands care were excellent things for difficult and
anxious cases. Therefore we had our full share of bad, or, as the
Sisters and nurses put it, good, cases.
As I had nothing to do with the hospital except on the proprietory side--
I
was very busy with war--work of my own--I cannot be accused of self-
laudation if I say that my wife won the praise, not only of the Medical
Authorities, but, which was still more to her and to me, the confidence
and gratitude of her patients. No small part of her success was due to a
very simple fact. She early saw the necessity of dividing the
administrative side of the hospital from the nursing side. Nursing is so
fascinating in itself that many Commandants were drawn from their proper
sphere of administration into surgical and medical work. My wife, partly
from an instinct for sound administration, and partly also because at
the moment she lacked the physical strength, confined herself strictly
to her own side. In a hospital in which the patients were continually
changing, which was four miles from a town and two miles from a railway
station, that side was in war-times and during the period of rationing,
by no means a light job. But the fact that there was one person, and
that the person in supreme charge of the institution, who did nothing
else except attend to the smooth running of the machine, meant that
there were no arrears of correspondence, that all Army forms were filled
up exactly and not, as many Commandants were inclined to think was far
better, in accordance with what they themselves judged to be reasonable
and necessary. Indeed, I was wont to tell my wife that I was appalled at
the bureaucratic spirit which she developed! I believe I am right in
saying that she never got an Army form wrong, though on several
occasions she was able to point out to her official superiors that they
had mistaken, or at any rate forgotten, their own elaborate rules.
The result was an extremely easy functioning of the official engine.
While other Commandants could be heard complaining that they could not
get answers from the authorities, or get the Army payments made
properly, my wife, I believe, never once failed to get the War Office
cheque, on the day it was due. There were never any complaints that she
was in arrears with her correspondence or with necessary information.
But then, instead of raging, as no doubt, she might have been quite as
much inclined to do as anyone else, at the absurdities of "red tape" and
so forth, she accepted them as necessary evils, like hailstorms and the
"all dreaded thunder-stroke."
Six months before the War, believing the catastrophe was coming, she
took instructions from an R.A.M.C. staff sergeant-major in all the
intricacies of yellow, blue, and red tickets, and of forms from A to Z,
or rather, from the first wound to the burial, required by the R.A.M.C.
The result was that when the War broke out she knew a great deal more
about the details of the Army Medical system than did many Staff or
Regimental Officers, and even more than many Medical Officers.
But I am breaking my rule of not writing about living people, and I must
stop. I may, however, say something about my own place in the hospital,
for my position was curious, and of very great interest to me. During
the four and a half years that the hospital was open, I lived in it as
what might be called a parlour-boarder. I kept my own bedroom, but my
house contained, as it were, forty guests, and guests of a very
fascinating kind. Our family life was embedded in the hospital. My
daughter was working in the wards, and my son used to come back from
Eton to spend his holidays in his hospital home. I was working at the
time, not only at _The Spectator_, but also at recruiting for the
Regular Army, which I regarded as my special duty, for I happened that
year to be Sheriff of my county. In addition I was at the head of a
curious little corps called the Surrey Guides and further was a member
of the Executive Committee for the Volunteer Training Corps--a body
whose activities alone would be well worth a chapter.
But though my work lay outside Newlands, and though I always spent two
nights a week in London, conducting, besides my editorial duties at
_The Spectator_ office, the duties I have already described in
connection with the American Correspondents, I gained a most valuable
experience from the hospital. In the first place, I did something which
was almost unique. I lived for four and a half years in a community of
women-the only man amongst nine. The house, of course, was full of male
patients, but I lived with the staff.
Besides my wife and daughter, there was a Sister-in-Charge, and, when
needed, an additional professional nurse, a staff of _masseuses_
which varied in number in accordance with the nature of the cases sent
to us, and four or five resident V.A.D.'s, including the night nurses.
In a house in such an isolated position as ours it was not possible for
the V.A.D.'s to live at home and come in for their duty hours.
I suppose the conventional cynic will expect me to say that I found out
how much more quarrelsome, jealous, and feline is a community of women
than one of men. Though I amused myself very much by watching how women
work in association, I am bound to say that I saw nothing which led me
to any such conclusion. I have seen plenty of men's quarrels in offices,
in clubs, in the common rooms of colleges, at schools, and still more,
perhaps, in mess-rooms and barracks, and I am bound to say that,
according to my experience, my sex is quite as bad as, and, on the
whole, rather worse than, women at the communal quarrel. Women are a
little less noisy in their quarrels, and little more ingenious, but that
is as far as I should care to generalise.
"They did not let you see."--That will not do as an explanation, for I
am sure that after the first seven or eight months, the ladies of the
staff came to ignore me completely, or to regard me rather as a part of
the furniture. Consequently, I saw them in what, if they had been men,
one might have called their shirt-sleeves. When you see hard-worked and
anxious people, as they come down to breakfast in the morning, when they
rush in to lunch, and when they sink, tired, into their chairs at
dinner, you have a pretty good opportunity for finding out all about
them. Under such conditions they cannot keep up the veil of convention
and of company manners. However, I cannot go into all these details,
much as I should like to, but must give only a general verdict.
I ended up my four and a half years as a parlour-boarder in a semi-
convent with a respect for women and their work, which had always been
very high, made still higher. If perhaps I found women a little less
sensitive than I thought, I certainly found them a great deal more
sensible, and, of course, as I suppose is the universal experience, a
great deal less easily shocked by things that ought not to shock them
than they are supposed to be. I mean by this that women are much less
afraid to look life full in the face and much more willing to understand
and to pardon, than is supposed. Also, I came to the conclusion that
women, though great disciplinarians, and often hard upon each other, are
not essentially merciless.
They are certainly, on the whole, less lazy than men, which is probably
a misfortune. I think Matthew Arnold was right when he spoke of women
being "things that move and breathe mined by the fever of the soul." The
fever of the soul, especially in a Sister, who, as is the case with most
of them, was grossly overworked in the hospital where she was trained,
is apt to prove a great evil.
If I learned a good deal about women at the hospital and if the result
of that learning was respect and admiration, I acquired an equally great
respect and admiration for the British soldier. I had always loved those
"contemptible regiments" who, as Sir Thomas Browne says, "will die at
the word of a sergeant," but I loved them still more when I saw their
good-natured, unostentatious way of life. They were, above all things,
easy and sympathetic livers. Almost the only thing that shocked and
disgusted them was being treated as heroes. Dr. Johnson talked about the
"plebeian magnanimity of the British common soldier" and meant the right
thing, though, in truth, there was nothing plebeian in the said
magnanimity,--nothing which would not have been worthy of the highest
birth and the highest breeding.
But the hospital did not raise my admiration merely for the soldier. It
raised it equally for the British working-man, who composed by far the
larger part of our patients. Ours, remember, was a soldiers' hospital,
not an officers'. We had, I think, in the whole course of our hospital
not more than four men who had been public-school boys or University
men. All the rest were labourers or artisans. When the hospital doors
closed, I respected the English working-man as much as ever, and added
to that respect a love and sympathy which I may record, but shall not
attempt to explain or to express in detail. I could fill a book with
stories and studies of our friends, for so they became, and so they
still remain.
My wife is constantly in touch with her old patients, and this does not
mean applications for help or for work, but letters and visits of
pleasure. That is good, but what is even better is that we constantly
come across references to the Newlands feeling, for around it quickly
grew up an indefinable _esprit de corps_. For example, on the day
on which I write these pages, one of our local newspapers contains a
letter from a Yorkshireman who had somehow seen an article in the
aforesaid paper in regard to some Red Cross work done by my wife. He
talks of the happy hours he spent at Newlands Corner, "hours which will
live for ever in my mind." That, of course, is commonplace enough and
sounds trivial, but it is repeated often enough to provoke a sense of
true communal fellowship.
One of the things with which I think my wife and I were specially
pleased about the hospital was the rapid way in which this sense of
_esprit de corps, i.e._, the public-school feeling, grew up. After
the first month or two, patients talked quite seriously and candidly
about "the old hospital." Again and again men told us that they should
never forget Newlands. Like the true Englishmen they were, they partly
loved Newlands because of the beauty of the scenery. The Englishman,
though generally insensible of, or at any rate irresponsive to, the
arts, is never irresponsive to a view. (John Stuart Mill's Autobiography
contains, by the way, a curious passage in regard to this point.) I
remember my wife telling me, the day after she had admitted a very bad
case, that the patient had said to her, "I am sure I shall get well
here, Commandant. It's such beautiful scenery."
But no more of the hospital here. I live in the hope that some day I may
write its history, and may be able to say something which will not be
open to the charge of, "Oh! Another boring book about the War!" As I
conceive it, my hospital book will be an analysis of the mind and
character of the British working-man with his defensive armour off, and
not an attempt to give any views on military or medical reform and so
forth.
One word more. My position in the hospital with the men was a strange
one. They soon saw that I played the game, and that if I saw them
breaking rules, met them, when I was riding, out of bounds, or
discovered them at any other of their wicked tricks, I never told tales,
or got them into trouble, or evoked any disciplinary reprisals. This
intensive cultivation of the blind eye raised me to the position of a
friendly neutral and gained for me their confidence. Besides, I believe
it soothed them to think that I, too, had to endure the regiment of
women to which they were exposed. They suspected that I also quailed, as
they must, before "the Sister in charge."
Their manners, by the way, were always perfect without being formal or
absurd. They seemed to have an instinct for absolute good breeding. Yet
they were all the time what Whitman called "natural and nonchalant
persons." Neither my wife, nor her staff, nor I ever made any pretence
to ourselves that they were plaster saints because their manners were
good. They were as wicked as demons and as mischievous as monkeys, and
seized every occasion for natural wrong-doing. In fact, they were just
like schoolboys, but they observed always the schoolboy law. Quarrel
they might, and dislike each other as they often did very bitterly, they
never told tales of each other. The Belgians, of whom we had some at the
beginning, were very different. They, curiously enough, gave each other
away quite freely, and complained of each other to the Commandant. But,
as one of our men said to me in excuse for the bad behaviour of the
Belgians, "They was never taught any better. They hadn't the training
we've had."
Another unwritten chapter, which I desire particularly to write, is a
chapter on Newlands, the history of the house which I love only less
than I love Sutton Court,--the house which I and my wife built, if not
with our own hands, at any rate with our own heads,--the house in which
my children were born, and two of my grandchildren,--the house from
which my daughter was married,--the house which I have seen grow like a
tree out of the ground,--finally, a house sanctified by the sufferings
of brave men, who had fought for a great cause and laid us all under an
obligation never to be expressed in words. Newlands, with its keen,
almost mountain, air, its views, its woodlands, its yews, its groves of
ash, and oak, and thorn, its green paths winding through the greyer and
deeper-toned gorse, heather, and bracken, is a thing to live for. If one
can be grateful, as certainly one can, to things inanimate, I am
grateful for the health and strength which Newlands has given me. But
this must be told, if I ever write it, in the history of the house.
Still, I regret not to have done more honour to Newlands here, as I
regret not to have been able to make my salute to the wounded in better
form.
Another chapter "arising out of" Newlands, which I should like to have
written, would have been on my work as Chief of the Surrey Guides. My
readers need not be afraid of some burst of amateur militarism. I should
have treated the Surrey Guides simply as a kind of "new model" version
of Cobbett's Rural Rides. It was my duty to explore all the paths and
roads of the county, and delightful work it was. My experiences must
certainly be put on record somewhere and sometime, for, alas! the horse
is dying out and with him will die the bridle-paths and the pack-roads.
The night-riding part of my Surrey Guide work was to me particularly
attractive. No one who has not tried night-riding across country will
realise how fascinating it is and, comparatively speaking, how easy.
Provided you ride a pony, instead of a huge, long-legged, heavy-
weighted, badly-balanced horse, there is neither danger nor difficulty.
I will not say that the secret of night-riding is to give yourself up to
your horse, for your horse may be as big a blunderer as you, and become
a mixture of stupidity and anxiety. What I advise is, give yourself up
to your sub-consciousness, if you can, and this will lead you through
the darkest places and the roughest roads in ample security.
Another chapter which I believed I was going to write in this book was
to be devoted to inscriptions. I have always loved the art of the
epigraphists, and I wanted to quote some examples, including (1) an
inscription for a sun-dial, (2) an inscription for a memorial to Lord
Halifax, the trimmer, the greatest of Whig statesmen, (3) another to
William Pitt, and (4) an inscription to the Quakers who fought and died
in the War,--men whose noble combination of patriotism and self-
abnegation impressed me profoundly.
Their ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, Their names a great example
stand to show How strangely high endeavour may be blest When Piety and
Valour jointly go.
Another Surrey chapter might have dealt with my activities as Sheriff
and my conceptions of that office.
Still another chapter ought to have centred in my personal life at
Newlands. It was at Newlands that my health broke down and I saw, or
thought I saw, as did my doctors, the advance of the penumbra, the
shadow of eclipse which was to engulf my life. I wanted very much, when
I began this book, to put on record a description of how utterly
different than is commonly supposed are the feelings of the occupant of
the condemned cell. I should also like to have recorded certain
reflections upon how a serious illness becomes a kind of work of art, a
drama or film in real life, in which the patient, the doctors, the
nurses, the friends, and the relations all play their appropriate parts,
and contribute each in his order to the central theme. But this and "The
Adventure of Dying," a theme which has never yet been adequately
treated, but ought some day to be, must await not, of course, the actual
coming of the Gondolier, for that is too late, but that interval between
life and death which the Emperor Diocletian boasted that he had created
for himself.
Another unwritten chapter on a subject which may sound dull, but which
might very well have been one of the best, was to be called "The
Consolations of the Classics." It would have told how in his later years
new stars had risen for the adventurer in the voyage of life, while many
of the planets that were in their zenith in his youth have suffered
decline.
As a boy, and even in the prime of life, I knew nothing of Racine. I now
bend my head in adoration. Again, I knew little or nothing of Balzac. I
now think of him as one of the greatest of the analysts of human
conduct,--not as great as Shakespeare, but, all the same, very great,
and almost as terrible as he is great. If ever a man fascinates and is
intolerable, it is Balzac.
I should have liked, but that is not a thing which can be compressed or
sandwiched into any chapter, to have written quite frankly and fully
about my religious beliefs. Here, indeed, I had planned with some care.
I wanted to say not what I thought other men ought to believe, nor what
I thought I ought to believe myself, or, again, what I ought not to
believe in order to make my _credo_ look reasonable and "according
to plan." What I wanted to do was to say frankly, fairly, and truthfully
what I do believe as a matter of fact and not as a matter of ought or
ought not. I wanted to record an existing set of actualities, not to
write a piece of philosophy or metaphysics. _I wanted, in fact, to
photograph my soul._ But this, again, must wait, though I hope it
will not wait very long.
If I write such a paper I shall certainly take for my motto Lord
Halifax's words to Bishop Burnet: "I believe as much as I can: and God
Almighty will, I am sure, pardon me if I have not the digestion of an
ostrich."
I will neither be put off on the one side by making an effort to express
belief in more than I can believe, nor, again, refuse to record my
honest belief in some "fact of religion" because it will not be thought
creditable for me, or because certain people will think me superstitious
and unreasonable, just as other people will think me too rationalistic.
I will yield nothing to the demand, "You cannot possibly believe
_this_, when you have just said that you don't believe _that_.
The two things must hang together. You cannot pick and choose like this
at your fancy."
My answer is, I can, I do, and I will. My endeavour is not an attempt to
reconcile beliefs, but to say for good or for evil what I do believe. I
believe that London lies to the Northeast of the place at which I am
dictating these words. Faith is a fact, not a fragment of reasoning, and
I mean to put down the said fact for what it is worth.
How I wish I could write my chapter on the odd things that have happened
to me in life, and record the strange and inexplicable things that I
have heard of from other people. I don't mean by this that I have a
number of second-hand ghost-stories to tell. All the same I could t-ell
of certain things much more impressive because they are so much less
sensational. It was my habit as a young man, a habit which I wish I had
not abandoned, to ask everybody I came across, who was worth
interrogating, what was the oddest thing that had happened in their
lives. One would have supposed that I should often have got for my
impertinence a surly answer, or, at any rate, an elegant rapier-thrust,
or some other form of snub. Strangely enough, I never found anyone "shy"
at my question, but I did get many curious answers, and some of these I
have a perfect right to record. A section of this chapter should deal
with accidental conversations and accidental confessions. It has been my
good luck once or twice to listen to the most strange talk in trains and
other public places, and again, by straight questions I have sometimes
elicited very crooked answers.
For example, when I was a young man I once heard an old gentleman in a
third-class railway carriage remark vaguely and yet impressively to the
company at large, as follows: "I once saw six men hanged in a very
rustic manner." That, I think everyone will agree with me, was an
excellent conversational opening. The full story, though I cannot tell
it here, was quite as good. So was the story of William Harvey, "_the
girt big Somersetshire man_" and what he did in a fight with Spanish
Pilots in the Bilbao River. Of this story, told to me in the broadest
Somersetshire dialect by a Somersetshire boatman who was present at the
fight, I cannot resist quoting one passage: "They were all dressed in
white and fighting with their long knives. But William Harvey, who was
six feet six high, got hold of the axe we always kept on deck for
cutting away the mast if it went in a storm, and he knocked them over
with that. And as fast as he did knock them over, we did chuck the
bodies into the water."
Another of my accidental conversations opened with these words: "And she
never knew till she followed her to her grave that she was her own
mother." The personal pronouns are slightly mixed, but the story might
well develop like a Greek play.
Again, I planned a chapter to describe the four most beautiful human
beings seen by me in the course of my life. Strangest of all, and
perhaps most beautiful of all, using beauty in rather a strained sense,
was the man alluded to in my dedication,--the man my wife and I saw in
the Jews' Garden at Jahoni. We were resting in the garden after a very
long ride in very hot weather, when there entered a young man in a white
tunic, with bare feet and legs. On his head was a wide hat of rough
straw, and across his shoulder a mattock. His face and form could only
be described in the famous words, "Beauty that shocks you." Why his
beauty shocked us, and must have shocked any other seers possessed of
any sensibility, I cannot say. Thinking he was a gardener, we asked our
Dragoman to ask him some simple question but he could not, or did not,
obtain any information. The creature was like the figures of Faunus or
Vertumnus, or one of those half-deities or quarter-deities that one sees
among the marbles in public collections. "Graeco-Roman School, of the
late Antonine Period; probably representing a Rural Deity, or God of
Spring or Agriculture in the Latin mythology." Certainly the more
decadent side of late Greek or Roman art seemed in some strange way to
be living again in this amazing being.
Far more really beautiful, far more interesting, and far more impressive
was a woman whom I and my younger brother met with in a tram-car outside
the Porta del Popolo in Rome. Up till then I had spent much time in
wondering why the Italian population had declined in the matter of good-
looks and why one never saw anyone like a Bellini or a Raphael Madonna.
And then I looked up after having my ticket clipped and saw the perfect
youthful mother of the Cinquecento painters sitting opposite me. A more
exquisitely harmonious face and expression were never vouchsafed to my
eyes. She was a countrywoman of the richer peasant class, and was
apparently making her first visit to the city accompanied by her
husband. One would gladly have taken oath at first sight that she was
the perfect wife and mother, and yet there was no sentimental pose about
her--only the most naive and innocent delight told in smiles, laughter,
and blushes. The things she saw from the tram window seemed to make her
whole being ripple with pleasure. Happily I cannot here be judged as a
sentimental visionary for my companion will avouch the facts.
Curiously enough, though I think English women, as a whole, far surpass
the Italians in their looks, the other perfectly beautiful woman whom I
have seen was also an Italian. I was taking an early walk, with my
younger brother, from Baveno to the summit, or at any rate, to the
shoulder of the Monte Moteroni. The time was between five and six
o'clock in the morning, and the place a small peasant's farm just at the
fringe of the land between the open mountain and the cultivated slopes.
I looked over the hedge or wall, I forget which, and there was a bare-
legged girl of some seventeen or eighteen working in the field with her
father and her brothers, hoeing potatoes. Here, indeed, was something
worth writing home about--a figure like the Lombard girl in Browning's
"Italian in England, "--a face gentle, simple, kind, but, above all,
beautiful, and a figure worthy of the face.
The fourth figure in my gallery of the visions that the turn of the road
took from my eyes and "swept into my dreams for ever" was seen during a
purely prosaic walk in South Kensington. Unsuspecting, unperturbed, I
was bent on a constitutional, or maybe a shopping expedition, when there
suddenly arose before my astonished eyes, out of a man-hole in the
middle of the street--I honestly believe it was the Cromwell Road--a
young workman with flaxen hair and a short beard,--a man with something
of the face and figure which the Italian painters gradually came to
attribute to the Christ. But here again, as in the case of the Madonna
of the tram-car, the man evidently had never been told of, or thought
of, the resemblance. He seemed perfectly unconscious and natural. Though
the trained eye might notice a resemblance in the outline of the face,
the happy smile and negligent air showed nothing of the Man of Sorrows.
He was just an ordinary Englishman.
When I think of those four figures of resplendent beauty--and
especially of the two women, for the Syrian had something sinister and
uncanny about him and the young Englishman was too prosaic in
essentials--I recall the passage which I know is somewhere in Sir Thomas
Browne, though I am quite unable to find it, in which the Physician
Philosopher declares that when he sees specially beautiful persons he
desires to say a grace or thanksgiving to Heaven for the joy that has
been vouchsafed him.
As to the strange stories and strange things told me, I should have
liked particularly to chronicle two at length. One is the story of a
tiny Indian spindle that spun by itself in the dust, and the other,
though it had no marvel in it, except the marvel of maternal feeling, is
the story of a chamois and her young one on a glacier-pass. The English
mountaineer who told it me, was on a difficult climb. Suddenly he saw to
his astonishment a chamois, the shyest of all animals, standing stock-
still on a steep glacier. She actually let him come so close to her that
he could have touched her with his hand, and then he saw the reason. The
chamois stood at the very edge of a deep crevasse, and up from its cold,
blue depths came the cry of a terrified and agonised creature--cries
that were answered by the mother chamois. The little chamois had fallen
through the ice-bridge and lay some hundred feet or so below and beyond
all recovery. The narrator was an ordinary table-d'hote Smoking-Room
tourist, but he could hardly recount the story without tears. He tried,
but it was impossible to effect a rescue, and he had to leave the
wretched mother where she was. As he said, "Considering what chamois
are, it sounds absolutely incredible that the mother should have been
able to overcome her shyness of mankind and stay by the young one. I
wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. She took no more notice
of me and my guide than if we had been rocks. Poor brute!"
Another chapter would have recorded the influence upon my life of great
writers, great poets, great painters, great sculptors, and great
musicians. Next, I should have loved to give in detail accounts of my
travels, not in strange or dangerous parts of the earth, but through
some of the most beautiful scenery of Europe and in the fringes of
Africa and Asia. As a young man, I journeyed in sledges over most of the
Alpine passes in the winter, for, owing to my uncle John Symonds being
one of the discoverers of the High Alps in winter, I was early, so to
speak, in the snow-field. To this day nothing attracts me more than the
thought of a long day or night spent in a sledge.
I crossed the Splugen by day in the winter, and by moon-light in the
summer. I crossed the St. Gothard (before the tunnel was made) in a
Vetturino carriage. I have crossed the Simplon, and I have many times
crossed the Bernina and all the other passes of the Orisons in the snow
in mid-winter. For those who like, as I do, sharp cold, and ardent
sunlight, there is nothing more delightful, and if as sometimes happens,
one can see or hear an avalanche really close, without getting into it,
a pleasant spice of danger is added. But I did not love the Alps merely
in the winter. Though no expert climber, I was fond of the mountains to
the point of fanaticism, and though I never got higher than 11,000 feet,
or a little over, I had the extremely interesting experience of falling
into a crevasse. Fortunately I was well held by the rope against the
white grey edge of the blue abyss, while my legs kicked freely in the
illimitable inane.
Is there anything in the world like being aroused in the grey of dawn by
the man with the axe and the rope? Can anything equal that succession of
scenes, the Alpine village in sleepy silence, the pastures and the
cultivated land, the inevitable little bridge on the inevitable stream,
then the belt of pines, then the zone of rocks and flowers, best and
gayest of all gardens, and last the star gentians and the eternal snows?
A holiday heart, twenty years of age, a friend, a book of poetry, and a
packet of food in one's pocket!--Truly, "If there is a Paradise, it is
here, it is here!"
Horses that I have known and liked, and on whose backs I have felt
supremely happy--rides on mules in Spanish or African mountains, rides
in the Syrian or Libyan Deserts on true Arabs, or, perhaps most
thrilling of all, night rides on the Downs, would make a tale, whether
delightful to read by others I know not, but certainly delightful to be
recorded by me.
"Projects Fulfilled and Unfulfilled" would have made a good chapter, as
would also "Quotations and the Effects of Poetry on Everyday Existence."
Another chapter which I have not written, but should like to have
written, would have been "Some Uncles"--I use the word "some" in both
the common and the slang sense--for I may be said to have been specially
rich in this relationship. Two of my Indian uncles were well known to
the public. One was Sir John Strachey, for six months acting Viceroy of
India, owing to Lord Mayo's assassination and the delay in his successor
taking up the post. The other was Sir Richard Strachey, who began his
Indian life as a subaltern in the Hon. East India Company's Corps of
Sappers and Miners. He had a horse killed under him at the Battle of
Sobraon, and afterwards became one of the greatest of Indian Civil
Engineers, a Member of Council (Public Works Department), and one of the
greatest of canal and railway constructors. Henry Strachey, another
uncle, commanded a battalion of Gourkhas, and died over ninety years of
age. Though little known to the world, he was a man of memorable
character and in his youth accidentally and temporarily the talk of
London as a Thibetan explorer. William Strachey, a fourth uncle, was the
strangest of men. Like the "Snark," he breakfasted at afternoon tea and
lived by candlelight instead of sunlight,--a wholly fantastic man,
though one of great ability. At one time he was what our forefathers
called "a man about town,"--a member of Brook's Club during the Fifties
and Sixties, a friend of Thackeray and of "Flemming, the Flea," and a
clerk in the Colonial office. He was often selected by Lord Palmerston
for special work. Later, however, he developed such strangely nocturnal,
though by no means noisy habits, that he almost disappeared from the ken
of his family. He, by the way, once spoke to me of Lady William Russell,
of whom I have already written, describing her as one of the most
beautiful and in later years one of the most delightful people he had
ever seen, and the best of all hostesses--"You used to look up at the
fanlight over the door of her house in South Audley Street, and if you
saw the gas-jet burning you knew that she was at home, expecting the
company of her friends, and needed no further invitation. Whatever the
hour was, if the light was burning you could go in and finish your
evening in talk with her and her other guests." She was thus at home
almost every evening to the people favoured enough to have the entry of
her house.
Another uncle was Mr. George Strachey, a diplomat, and for some thirty
years Her Britannic Majesty's representative at Dresden,--a man of great
ability, but with a nature better fitted to a man of letters than to an
official. Of Strachey great-uncles I could tell many a curious and
entertaining tale, and especially of the man whom my father succeeded,--
the man we called "the second Sir Henry." It has been said of him that
he was "odd even for a Strachey," and I could prove that up to the hilt.
Almost as odd, from many points of view, though much more human, was his
brother, Richard Strachey, one of the prize figures of the Military and
Diplomatic Service of the East India Company. He is still commemorated
in Persia on the leaden water-pipes of Ispahan, but how and why is too
long a story for a chapter of apology.
Dearly should I have loved to write a chapter on "The Art of Living,"
for unquestionably "life demands art,"--an aphorism, by the way, not, as
most people think, of Pope but of Wordsworth. (Wordsworth, remember, had
a great deal of the Eighteenth Century in him.) That chapter, however,
would easily become a book or a serpent, as says the Italian proverb.
Last of all, how many are the men and women, now dead, whom I should
like to have mentioned and of whom I have something worth saying. They
are included in a rough list which I drew up when I first thought of
writing my autobiography. I give these names written down just as they
occurred to me. Some of them have been referred to in the body of this
book, but most of them are not even mentioned. Lord Roberts; Watts the
painter; Sir John Millais; Sir William Harcourt; Lord Houghton; Walter
Bagehot; Lord Carlingford; Lord Goschen; the Duke of Argyll of
Gladstone's Cabinets; Mr. Macmillan, the publisher; Mr. George Smith;
Lady Stanley of Alderley; Lord Carlisle; Lord Morpeth; Sir Edward Cook;
Lord Kitchener; the late Duke of Northumberland; Admiral Dewey; Mr.
William Arnold; Lord Burghclere; Sir William Jenner; Miss Mary Kingsley;
Lord Glenesk; the late Lord Grey; the late Lord Astor; Sir William
White, the naval constructor; the late Lord Sligo; Dean Beeching; Bishop
Perceval; Archbishop Temple; my uncle, Professor T. H. Green; Professor
Dicey; Professor Freeman; Bishop Stubbs; Mr. Lecky; Mrs. Humphry Ward;
Lord Bowen; Mr. Baugh Allen, the last of the Special Pleaders; Professor
Henry Smith, the mathematician; Lord Justice Fry, and Lord Balfour of
Burleigh.
There was another man, too little and too lately known, with whom I
wanted to deal at length, for he exercised a distinct and special
influence on my life. I mean Donald Hankey, "The Student in Arms." I
had, indeed, designed to speak of him in a special chapter on the effect
of the War on my life, but that chapter did not get written, or, rather,
remains over to be written when the perspective is easier and better,
and the world has given up its last, and to me very futile and foolish,
mode of talking as if we ought to be ashamed of the War, or, at any
rate, as if we ought to treat it as an utterly tiresome subject.
Here, then, I shall say only that the essential thing about Hankey was
that he was one of the true saints of the world, or, rather, one of the
saints who matter. Yet never was there a less saintly saint. He was a
man you could talk to rationally on any subject. I, who really knew him,
would not have called him a man of the world, because it would have been
in essence misleading; but I should have quite understood someone else
saying it and should have known exactly what he meant. Not only had he
not the temper of the zealot or the fanatic, but he was a kindly man,
with no fierceness about him. Yet somehow, and this was the miracle, he
contrived to have none of the easy unction of the pushing man of
holiness who realises that if he is to succeed in accomplishing what he
wants accomplished, he must assume a certain cunning suavity of manner
which is really foreign to his character. Hankey had no pose. He was at
bottom what Walt Whitman calls a "natural and nonchalant" person, who
happened to be made all through of sweetness and light, though never the
superior person, and never, as it were, too good for this world. Not for
one moment did you find in him the chill of sanctity. In the phrase of
John Silver, "he kept company very easy."
I should imagine that confession was the very last thing that Hankey
would ever have encouraged in anyone, for it is the most debilitating of
the virtues. All the same, a penitent would have found him an
extraordinarily easy occupant of the box. He was warm-hearted,
sympathetic, and full of the victorious spirit. One felt with Hankey
that he was born for whatever was arduous. In truth he was "God's
soldier." What gives the extreme characteristic impression of Hankey is
that last vision of him set forth in a letter by the soldier who,
happening to look into a trench, saw him kneeling in prayer with his
company gathered round him, just before they went over the parapet.
If he had lived, he would, I am sure, have talked about the scene. I
never saw a man so natural and so little embarrassed in discussing such
matters as prayer or other spiritual experiences. He had in a marked
degree that absence of _mauvaise honte_ which marks the good man at
all times, in all places, in all religions, and in all races.
There is a man, now dead, who told me something which I want to record
in this very convenient chapter. His words impressed me out of all
proportion to their intrinsic importance. I feel indeed that there must
be something in them which I cannot analyse, but which makes them worth
preserving. The vitamines of food, we know, are not strictly analysable,
though their presence can be detected. No one knows of what they
consist, but, nevertheless, we know two things about them. They exist,
and they have a great influence upon metabolism. So in the food of the
mind there are vitamines which we can recognise, but not analyse, and,
therefore, cannot wholly understand. My readers, if they will look into
their own memories, will, I am sure, recall experiences of these mental
vitamines, trivial or ordinary in themselves, and yet holding a place so
clear and often indeed so vehement as to suggest that they contain some
quickening quality of their own.
The man with whom I connect certain of these vitamines of the mind was
Sir George Grove, the compiler of the _Dictionary of Music_. I did
not know him well; but, as a boy, he did me a kindly service. He
accepted the first poem of any length that I ever published. When I was
seventeen, that is a year before I went to Oxford, I sent him a poem,
alluded to in another chapter of this book, called "Love's Arrows." He
liked it and published it in _Macmillan's Magazine_, of which he
was then Editor. Macmillan's was a magazine given up to good literature,
and to get a place in it was considered no small honour.
Grove possessed a keen sense of literature, and he had known many of the
famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions,
I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a
story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's
character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both
rhetorically and intellectually a considerable influence on my mind.
Here is a _précis_ of our conversation.
"Did you ever see Newman?"
"Only once, and then I heard him preach."
"Was he in a big sense eloquent?"
"Yes. Though he had none of the airs and graces of the orator, he had
somehow in a high degree the power of thrilling you. I heard him in Lent
preaching in a small Roman Catholic chapel in London. He was a gaunt
figure, extremely emaciated and hollow-cheeked, with a very bad cough,
and as he stood in the pulpit, coughing hoarsely, he beat his breast
with his hand and forearm, till it sounded like the reverberation of a
huge cavernous drum." Grove went on to describe how the time was one of
great spiritual excitement in the Church of England and in the Roman
Church,--a time when people thought that Rome was going to reassert her
ascendancy over English minds. During the very week or month in which
the sermon was preached, Stanley's _Life of Arnold_ had appeared.
"At the end of that book Stanley describes how when Arnold lay dying, he
had, one evening, a very long talk with him about the Sacraments and the
part they played in the religious life. He records that conversation and
the Broad Church view of Arnold, and then tells how he rose next morning
and went to enquire as to Arnold, and how he found that Arnold had died
in the night. Newman was preaching on the old, old maxim, '_Nulla
salus extra ecclesiam_,' and dwelt, as a preacher with his views
naturally would, on the contrast between the covenanted and uncovenanted
mercies of God. Those who were in the Church were absolutely safe. For
those who could trust only to the uncovenanted mercies of God there
could be no such safety. 'But,' he went on, 'it is not for me to deal
with them and their prospects of salvation and of life eternal.' And
then, with great feeling and emotion, 'Nor shall I presume to canvass
the fate of that man who, at night, doubted the efficacy of sacramental
wine, and died in the morning.'"
Though the words, of course, had no spiritual effect on Grove, he dwelt
upon the difficulty he had in conveying the profound emotional force of
these phrases when they were spoken by this strange figure in the
pulpit. Grove need not have made any apology. He amply managed, and this
was a proof of the preacher's power, to transfer the emotion of the
moment to me. The words in the spiritual sense mean nothing to me.
Indeed, they disgust, nay, horrify me as utterly irreligious. Yet I am
bound to say that I feel, and always have felt, their emotional appeal
urgently and deeply. Here, if anywhere, are the vitamines of oratory.
Again, I should like to have had a chapter on the links of the past,
because I have been fortunate in that respect. Some of these I have
recorded in other chapters, but I should like to put on record the fact
that I actually knew and spent several days in a country house with a
lady who actually received a wedding-present from Keats and also one
from Shelley. That lady was Mrs. Proctor, the widow of Barry Cornwall,
the poet. When I first saw Mrs. Proctor, who, by the way, was well known
to my wife and Mrs. Simpson, she was a fellow-guest with me and my wife
at a house-party at the Grant-Duffs'. Though, I suppose, nearly ninety
years old at that time (it was three or four years before her death),
there was not a trace of extreme old age in her talk. She was neither
deaf nor blind, but enjoyed life to the full. She did not seem even to
suffer from physical weakness, but was capable of hours of sustained
talk. She had known everybody worth knowing in the literary world and
had vivid recollections of them. For example, besides mentioning the
wedding-presents from Keats and Shelley, she was also proud to remember
that she had received a present from the murderer, Wainwright, Lamb's
friend,--who wrote under the name of Janus Weathercock--the man who
insured his step-daughter's life and then poisoned her. Owing to the
extraordinary way in which things were arranged in those days, the
murderer, though found guilty, had his sentence commuted to
transportation--apparently as a kind of recognition of his literary
ability.
Oddly enough, this was not the only time that accident put me in touch
with this singular and sinister figure,--the man too who first talked
about the psychological interest of colours and cared, as Mrs. Proctor
said, for strange-looking pots and pieces of china. My friend Willie
Arnold told me that when his mother was a girl, or a young married
woman, I forgot which, in Tasmania, she had her picture drawn by a
convict, and that convict was the celebrated Wainwright. According to
Willie Arnold, his character was not supposed to be of the best even in
those days, and great care was taken that during the sittings someone
else should always be in the room!
Another link with the past, which is worth recording, is that I knew
well a man, Sir Charles Murray, who told me that he had seen Byron. When
I cross-questioned him, he told me something that I think must have been
an error of memory. He said it was at a ball in Paris that he saw the
poet. Now, I feel pretty sure that Byron never was in Paris. In the
earlier part of his life he could not have got there because of the war,
and after the peace, as we all know, he began his travels at Antwerp,
and journeyed up the Rhine into Switzerland and then crossed the Alps by
the Simplon into Italy.
Perhaps, however, my most sensational link with the past was as follows.
When I first came into Surrey, the old Lord Lovelace--the man who
married Byron's daughter, and who built Horsley Towers--was still alive
and could be seen, as I saw him, driving about our Surrey lanes in a
pony-chaise. Lord Lovelace is reported to have made the following entry
in his diary about the year 1810, that is, when he was a boy some ten or
twelve years old--"Today I dined with the old Lord Onslow [a neighbour
then, presumably, of about ninety years of age], and heard him say that
as a boy he had known one of the Cromwellian troopers--Captain
Augustine--who was on guard round the scaffold when Charles I was
executed."
Oddly enough, I have another link with the Cromwellian Wars. I remember,
some forty years ago, my uncle, Sir Charles Cave, of whom I am glad to
say I can speak in the present tense, told me that he was shooting on
one of his farms below Lansdowne, the hill that rises above Bath. The
tenant of the land was a very old farmer, and he informed my uncle that
his grandmother, who lived to a great age, but whom he had just known as
a boy, used to say that she remembered how, when a girl, the soldiers
came into the village after the Battle of Lansdowne and took every loaf
of bread out of the place.
An even more personal link with the past was afforded by my mother's
aunt, Miss Sykes, and my great-aunt. She had seen George III walking on
the terrace at Windsor, old, blind, and mad, with his family and
courtiers curtseying to those poor blind eyes and vacant wits every time
he turned in his constitutional. Another of her recollections, however,
was far more thrilling to me as a lad. Miss Sykes, sister of my mother's
mother, belonged to a naval family, and her mother's sister had married
Admiral Byron, the seaman uncle of the poet. Therefore, Byron and Miss
Sykes were in that unnamed relationship, or pseudo-relationship, which
belongs to those who have an aunt or an uncle in common. It happened
that my aunt was on a visit to the Byrons when the poet's body, which
was consigned to the Admiral, was brought to London. The Admiral, who
lived near Windsor, posted up to receive the barrel of spirits in which
the remains were preserved. When he returned from his gruesome visit the
ladies of his family, and none more so than my aunt, then a girl of
fifteen or sixteen, were very anxious to know what he had seen and what
the remains of the most-talked-of man in the Europe of his day looked
like. "What did he look like, my dear? He looked like an alligator,"
said the Admiral, who did not mince his words. It is strange that men
should prefer to put their kin in what, in the naval records after
Trafalgar, is called "a pickle" rather than give them a burial at sea or
in "some corner of a foreign field"! But on such matters there can be no
argument. It is a matter of feeling, not of reasoning.
So much for unwritten chapters and unwritten books, though, perhaps, I
ought to add a postscript upon the writing of memoirs, describing how
pleasant, though arduous a task it is. At any rate, it has proved so in
my case. I began these memoirs with the feeling that, though it was
quite worth while to record my part in the general adventure of living,
I must expect that, even if I were to contrive to give pleasure to my
readers, the part of the writer must be hard, laborious, and ungrateful.
"Why," I asked myself, "should I munch for others the remainder biscuit
of life?" Yet, strange to say, what I had looked forward to almost with
dread, turned out to be by far the pleasantest literary experience of my
life. I have never been one of those people who dislike writing, or find
it, as some people do, agonising; but I was not in the least prepared to
find how pleasant it could be to dive into the depths of memory and let,
what the author of the anonymous Elizabethan play, _Nero_, calls
"the grim churl" of memory lead you through the labyrinth of the past.
But, though the path was pleasant, nay, exhilarating and stimulating, I
must confess to the fact that I have had no psychological experiences,
regrets, or disillusionments. I have had no temptation to write as to
the shortness and precariousness of human existence, or to reflect how
base I had found mankind, or, again, to deplore the past, curse the
present, and dread the future. Life to me, in looking back, seems on the
whole a very natural and simple show. No one, in one sense, feels more
strongly than I do that we are being swept along by the mighty current
of a vast river, without any clearer indication of what is the outlet of
the river than of what is its source. But though these things may be an
excuse for a great deal of rhetoric, they somehow seem to me, if I may
use the word again, natural and non-inflammatory. It is far easier to
trust what those who, liking the vagueness of theology, call "the larger
hope," but which I should be content to call plainly the mercy of God--a
mercy which I, for one, make bold to say I would rather have
uncovenanted than covenanted. Covenanted mercies are a kind of thing
which may do very well at an insurance office or for business purposes,
but they are not the mercies one would ever dream of asking for or
accepting from an earthly father. Then how can one dare to speak of them
in the same breath with God?
"But this," I hear some readers say, "is the illusion of faith and has
nothing of the permanence of fact." Well, I, for one, am content to rest
on faith, honest and instinctive. Faith, to my mind, is a fact and a
very palpable fact,--a fact as vital as any of the other great
incommensurables and insolubles of our existence.
If I am asked to treat of the river, or rather, the ocean of life and
the adventure of its voyage in terms that will satisfy those not
fortunate enough to have faith, let me commend to them that memorable
dream set forth by that most honest and exact of agnostics as of
jurists, Mr. Justice Stephen. The dream, published some fifty years ago,
is as noble a piece of literature as it is a monument of intellectual
insight.
I dreamt [he says, after Bunyan's fashion] that I was in the cabin of a
ship, handsomely furnished and lighted. A number of people were
expounding the objects of the voyage and the principles of navigation.
They were contradicting each other eagerly, but each maintained that the
success of the voyage depended absolutely upon the adoption of his own
plan. The charts to which they appealed were in many places confused and
contradictory. They said that they were proclaiming the best of news,
but the substance of it was that when we reached port most of us would
be thrown into a dungeon and put to death by lingering torments. Some,
indeed, would receive different treatment; but they could not say why,
though all agreed in extolling the wisdom and mercy of the Sovereign of
the country. Saddened and confused I escaped to the deck, and found
myself somehow enrolled in the crew. The prospect was unlike the
accounts given in the cabin. There was no sun; we had but a faint
starlight, and there were occasionally glimpses of land and of what
might be lights on shore, which yet were pronounced by some of the crew
to be mere illusions. They held that the best thing to be done was to
let the ship drive as she would, without trying to keep her on what was
understood to be her course. For the strangest thing on that strange
ship was the fact that there was such a course. Many theories were
offered about this, none quite satisfactory; but it was understood that
the ship was to be steered due north. The best and bravest and wisest of
the crew would dare the most terrible dangers, even, from their
comrades, to keep her on her course. Putting these things together, and
noting that the ship was obviously framed and equipped for the voyage, I
could not help feeling that there was a port somewhere, though I doubted
the wisdom of those who professed to know all about it. I resolved to do
my duty, in the hope that it would turn out to have been my duty, and I
then felt that there was something bracing in the mystery by which we
were surrounded, and that, at all events, ignorance honestly admitted
and courageously faced, and rough duty vigorously done, was far better
than the sham knowledge and the bitter quarrels of the sickly cabin and
glaring lamplight from which I had escaped.
Was there ever a nobler parable more nobly expressed? It may well end
the last page of the last chapter of _The Adventure of Living_.
_Academy, The_, 182
Adams, John, 72
Advocate journalism, 319-320
Ainger, Canon, 18, 22
Alps, 482-483
America, iv, 313
American Civil War, 90-92, 444-446
American journalists, 326-342
Americans, 326
Anonymity, 320-322
Antwerp, Siege of, 64
Arnold, Dr., 489
Arnold, Matthew, 283-285
Arnold, Willie, 284, 491
Arthurian legend, 98-100
_Asia and Europe_, 231
Asquith, Herbert, 12, 17, 328-329, 334, 452, 453, 454
Aubers Ridge, 349
Autobiography, 27-28
BAGEHOT, WALTER, 184-186
Bailleul, 344
Balfour, Lord, 401, 407
Barbellion's diary, 4
Barnes, Rev. William, 19-22
Bazaine, Marshal, 99, 101-102
Beaconsfield, Lord, 256, 387
Beautiful human beings, 478-481
Bedford, Duke of, 250
Beeching, Dean, 171-175, 200-204
_Beggar's Opera, The_, 182
Bell, Mr. Edward Price, 333
Berlioz, 80 Blenheim, 113
Brown, Mr. Curtis, 333
Browne, Sir Thomas, 3, 105, 481
Browning, Robert, 25, 285-289
Browning, imitation of, 132-133
Buckmaster, Lord, 336, 337
Bullen, F.T., 213-215
Buller, Charles, 48
Burke, 48,70,71
Byron, Admiral, 493
Byron, Lord, 124,254, 266,492-493
CAIRO, iv Callimachus, 47-48
Camelot, 99
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry,305
Campion, Thomas, 62-63
Capes, Bernard, 221
Carlyle, 48-49
Caste, 240-241
Cat, _Spectator_, 22, 24
Chamberlain, Mrs., 385-386
Chamberlain, Austen, 386
Chamberlain, Miss Beatrice, 389
Chamberlain, Joseph, 380-389,397-398
Chamberlain, Neville, 380
Chamois, 481-482
Charles I., 492
Cheap cottages, 402
Chicago riots, 418
Cicero, 157
Classics, 153, 161, 476
City Companies, 388-389
Civil War, 65
Clive, 66-70
Clough's _Amours de Voyage_, 86
Colvin, Mr. Ian, 228
_Conversations and Journals in Egypt_,280-281
_Conversations with the Statesmen of the Third Empire_, 277
Crabbe, 125
Cromer, Lord, 159, 308, 365-380,394,409
Cross, Sir Richard, 59
Curtis, Byron, 191-192
Damascus, iii Death, 58
De La Mare, Mr. Walter, 215-219
Delane, 313 Democracy, 425-433
Devonshire, Duke of, 11, 397-409
Devonshire, Elizabeth, Duchess of 272
Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, 272
Dibdin, 364 Dicey, E. and A., 182-183
"Dickybush," 345
_Dictionary of National Biography_, 196
_Digitalis_, 235
Donne and William Strachey, 61
Dream of my son's death, 88-89
Dream, Mr. Justice Stephen's, 495-496
Economics, 163-167
_Economist, The_, 183-184
_Edinburgh Review_, 194
Ely, Lady, 183-190
_English Constitution, The_, 185
Erskine, 49
Faith, 494-496
Fayum, the, iv Fisher, Mr. Joseph, 192
_'48_, 262-265
Fouche, 260-262
Free Exchange, 163-167
French Revolution, 3
Friendship, 363-365
Furnes, 357
Gambetta, 101
Garden City, 402-403
Gay, 182
George III., 73, 492
George, Lloyd, 263, 452, 454
German Ambassador, 393
Germany, 452-454
Gibbon, 272
Gifoon, Ali Effendi, 205-208
Gladstone, Mr., 11, 92, 186, 187, 304
Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 131-132
Granville, Lord, quotes _Spectator_ article, 16-17
Graves, Mr. C. L., 193, 214
Green, Professor T. H., 102, 140-141
Grenville, George, 67
Grove, Sir George, 488-490
_Gulliver's Travels_, review of, 5-7
Hadspen House, 18-19
Haig, Lord, 352
Hankey, Donald, 486-487
Hartington, Lord, 11, 397-409
Harvey, William, 478
Hastings, Lady Flora, 254
Hastings, Warren, 70-71
Hay, Colonel John, 390-397, 4I3-418
Hayward, Abraham, 257
"Head Munky" letter, 73-74
Hekekyan Bey, 280-281
Henry of Prussia, Prince, 392-393
"Highbury," 385-386
Hobhouse, Henry, 18
Hodges, Captain Thomas, 63-64
Hutton, 4, 8, 22-23, 223-225
Illness, 58
Imperialism, 300-312
Indian spindle, 481
Ingpen, Mr., 215
Inscriptions, 475
_Ionica_, author of, 48
Ireland, 441-447
Irving, Edward, 48-49
_Isolement_, 80-88
Jahoni, iii, 479
Jerusalem, v Johnstone, 183-186
Jones, Sir William, 47-48
Journalism, 25-26
Jowett, Dr., 144-146, 148-149, 255
Judicial journalism, 319
"Junius," 105-107
Keats, 490-491
Kemmel, 344
Kerrere, El, 211-212
Khedive, 368-369
Kitchener, Lord, 212
Lamartine, 262-265
Landor, W. S., 285-288
Lansdowne, Battle of, 492
Leader-writer, the, 294-296
Leaker's, Mrs., Autobiography, 113-116
Liberal Party, split in (1886), 11-14, 400
_Liberal Unionist, The_, 193, 400
Life, 493-496
Lincoln, Abraham, n, 91, 390-391,395,410,444-446
London, first year in, 5, 6
Lovelace, Lord, 492
_Love's Arrows_, introduction to, 137-138
Lushington, Dr., 290
MACKAIL, 174-175
McMahon, Marshal, 101
Machell, Captain, 207-209
Mallet, Sir Bernard, 7, 162-170
Mallet, Sir Louis, 266-267
Mallet, Stephen, 7
Marshalls of the Lakes, 54
Martial, 51
Martin, Mr. Roy, 333, 336-337
Masaniello, 47
Maurice, Frederick, 50
Mehemet Ali, 280-282
Melville, Herman, 213
Milton, 109
_Moby Dick_, 213
Mohl, M. and Mme., 255
Monarchy, 434-437
Mont des Cats, Le, 348-349
Moore, Sir John, 273
Moore, Thomas, no Morley, Lord, 181
Mother, my, 52-58
Mudford, 186
Murray, Sir Charles, 491
NAPIER, SIR CHARLES, 280-281
Naples, 47
Napoleon I., 76,270-271
Napoleon III., 206
Nassau-Senior, 253, 275-283
Needham, Mr., 340-341
Negro-lynching, 419-420
Nettleship, Professor, 102
Newbolt, Sir Henry, 52
Newlands Corner, 473-474
Newlands Corner Hospital, 466-473
Newman, Cardinal, 488-489
Newspaper proprietorship, 323
New York, iv Nore, Mutiny of the, 112
Novel, unfinished, 177
_Observer, The_, 182
Onslow, Lord, 492
Otranto, Duke of, 260-262
PAGE, AMBASSADOR, 460
_Pages from a Private Diary_, 200-204
_Pall Mall, The_, 182
Parliament Act, 455
Parody, 174-175
Party system, 438-440
Patmore, Coventry, 126
Peacock, 49
Peyronnet, Mme. de, 255, 258-262
_Poems in the Devonshire Dialect_, 19-22
Pollock, Sir Frederick, quoted, 23
Pope, the, 421-422
Pope, Alexander, 125-127, 404
Poperinghe, 345-346
Power of the Press, 325
Pozieres, 353
"President's Cabinet," the, 412
Press-gangs, 115
Pritchard, Mr. Hesketh, 221
Private school, 121-122
Private secretaries, 394-396
Proctor, Mrs., 490
Protection, 449-450
Publicity, 250-251, 313-318
Pusey, Dr., 143
_Quarterly Review, The_, 194
RACINE, 259, 476
Reeve, Henry, 194, 282
Religious views, my father's, 50-51
Religious views, my, 476-477
Renan, 141, 154-155
Rennell-Rodd, Sir, 174
Rhodes, Cecil, 301-311
Robinson, Crabbe, 49
Robinson, Mrs. Douglas, 420
Rogers, Samuel, 276
Roosevelt, President, 409-423
Russell, Lord Arthur, 253, 266-274
Russell, Lord John, 270-271
Russell, Lord Odo, 255
Russell, Lady William, 254, 484
SADOWA, 93, 231
St. Vincent de Paul, Institute of,354-356
Salisbury, Lord, 187, 404
_Saturday Review_, 4, 181
Scherpenberg, the, 344-348
Schnadhorst, 304-305
Secrecy, 290-293
_Sejanus_, 60
Shakespeare, 108-109, 124
Shakespeare and William Strachey, 59-60
Shelburne, Lord, 71
Shelley, 491
Shenstone, 151-152
Shepherdess, 360-362
Simpson, Mrs., 253, 266, 276-277
Simpson, Mr., 289-293
Sligo, Lord, 256
Sligo, Lady, 257, 258, 262-265
Smith, Mr. George, 195-199, 216
Smith, Reginald, 198,216
Smith, Sydney, 276
Social revolution, 461-463
Socialism, 163-167
Somersetshire farmer, 96-98
Soudanese Soldier, Memoirs of a., 204-212
Spluegen, iv Standard, The, 182 186-190
Stanley, Dean, 489
Stanley of Alderney, Lady, 266
Stephen, Mr. Justice, 495-496
Stephen, Leslie, 196, 288
Strachey, Mrs. A., 466-469
Strachey, Sir Edward, 33-35, 41-43
Strachey, Lady, 52-58
Strachey, Sir Henry, 41, 66-74, 365
Strachey, 2nd Sir Henry, 33, 47, 75
Strachey, John, the friend of Locke, 38-39
Strachey, Mr. Lytton, 372
Strachey, William (friend of Ben Jonson), 38, 59-63
Strachey, William (the "Snark"), 484
Student in Arms, A, 486-487
Suffolk, Lord, 54 Supernatural, 116-118
Surrey Guides, 474
Sutton Court, Somerset, 29-36, 39
Sutton, Sir Walter de, 32
Swinburne, 110
Sykes, Miss, 493
Symonds, Dr., 56-57
TACITUS, 258, 261, 262, 279
Talleyrand, 271, 314
Tariff Reform, 448-451
Tattersall's, 122
Taxpayer, 378
Tempest, The, 59
Terrorists, 259
Thackeray, 291
Thiers, 278
Tocqueville, 255
Townsend, Meredith, 4, 8, 9, 22-24, 225-252
UNCLES, SOME, 483-484
Unionist Party, formation of, 11
VEAL, ISRAEL, 33
Venables, Mr. George, and Barnes, 21
Venus of Milo, 107-108
Versailles, 71-72
Victoria, Queen, 187-191
Virgil, 20, 361
Virginia Company, 59-63
Virginibus Puerisque, 197
WAINWRIGHT, 491
Waldegrave, Lady, 54, 57, 123
Waller, 131
War, the Great, 326, 457-463
War Hospital, 466-473
Warren, Sir Herbert, 102
Waterloo, 93-96, 114
Weathercock, Janus, 491
Wellington, Duke of, 25, 95-96
Western Virginia, 444-445
Whig traditions, 36-38, 433-434
White House, 410
Whitman, Walt, 86-87
Wilson, President, 340
Woak Hill, 19-20
Wood, General Leonard, 415
Wordsworth, William, 80-81, 84-86, 107, 282
Wotton, Sir Henry, 61
Wyndham, George, 186-187
YPRES, 345-347, 353-354
Yser, 357-358
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