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.