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.