THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME
=i=
If people will write memoirs, they must expect to suffer. They have only
themselves to blame if life becomes almost intolerable from the waves of
praise and censure. I am going to speak of some books of memoirs and
biography--highly personal and decidedly unusual books, in the main by
persons who are personages.
_The Life of Sir William Vernon Harcourt_ concerns Sir William George
Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, who was born in 1827 and died in 1904.
He was an English statesman, grandson of Edward Vernon Harcourt,
Archbishop of York. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was
called to the bar in 1854. He entered Parliament (for Oxford) in 1868, sat
for Derby 1880-95, and for West Monmouthshire, 1895-1904. He was
Solicitor-general 1873-74, Home Secretary 1880-85 and Chancellor of the
Exchequer in 1886, 1892-94 and 1894-95. From March, 1894, to December,
1898, he was leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons. He wrote
in the London Times under the signature of "Historicus" a series of
letters on International Law, which were republished in 1863. His
biography, which begins before Victoria ascended the throne and closes
after her death, is the work of A. G. Gardiner.
_Memoirs of the Memorable_ is by Sir James Denham, the poet-author of
"Wake Up, England!" and deals with most of the prominent social names of
the end of the last and commencement of this century, including Mr.
Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Robert Browning, the Bishop of
London, Cardinal Howard, Lord Dunedin, Lewis Carroll, Lord Marcus
Beresford and the late Bishop of Manchester. The book also deals with club
life and the leading sportsmen.
_The Pomp of Power_ is by an author who very wisely remains anonymous,
like the author of _The Mirrors of Downing Street_. I shall not run the
risks of perjury by asserting or denying that the author of _The Mirrors
of Downing Street_ has written _The Pomp of Power_. As to the probability
perhaps readers of _The Pomp of Power_ had better judge. It is an
extremely frank book and its subjects include the leading personalities of
Great Britain today and, indeed, all the world. Lloyd George,
Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Lord Haig, Marshal Joffre, Lord
Beaverbrook, Millerand, Loucheur, Painleve, Cambon, Lord Northcliffe,
Colonel Repington and Krassin of Soviet Russia are the persons principally
portrayed. The book throws a searchlight upon the military and diplomatic
relations of Britain and France before and during the war, and also deals
with the present international situation. It may fairly be called
sensational.
Especially interesting is the anonymous author's revelation of the rôle
played in the war by Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, so lately
assassinated in London. The author was evidently an intimate of Sir Henry
and, just as evidently, he is intimately acquainted with Lloyd George,
apparently having worked with or under the Prime Minister. He is neither
Lloyd George's friend nor enemy and his portrait of the Prime Minister is
the most competent I can recall. Can he be Philip Kerr, Lloyd George's
adviser?
I praise, in this slightly superlative fashion, the picture of the British
Prime Minister by the author of _The Pomp of Power_ ... and I pick up
another book and discover it to be E. T. Raymond's _Mr. Lloyd George: A
Biographical and Critical Sketch_. The author of _Uncensored Celebrities_
is far too modest when he calls his new work a "sketch." It is a genuine
biography with that special accent due to the biographer's personality and
his power of what I may call penetrative synthesis. By that I mean the
insight into character which coördinates and builds--the sort of biography
that makes a legend about a man.
Mr. Raymond does not begin with the "little Welshman" but with a Roman
Emperor, Diocletian, our first well-studied exemplar of the "coalition
mind." These are the words with which, after a brilliant survey of the
Prime Minister's career, the author closes:
"If, however, we withhold judgment on every point where a difference of
opinion is possible, if we abandon to destructive criticism every act of
administrative vigour which is claimed by his admirers as a triumph, if we
accept the least charitable view of his faults and failures, there still
remains more than enough with which to defy what Lord Rosebery once called
'the body-snatchers of history, who dig up dead reputations for malignant
dissection.' If only that he imparted, in a black time, when it appeared
but too likely that the Alliance might falter and succumb from mere
sick-headache, his own defying, ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired,
puzzled, distracted and distrustful nation; if only that he dispelled the
vapours, inspired a new hope and resolution, brought the British people to
that temper which makes small men great, assured our Allies that their
cause was in the fullest sense our own, and finally achieved the great
moral victory implied in 'unity of command'--if these things be alone
considered, he will be judged to have earned for his portrait the right to
a dignified place in the gallery of history; and some future generation
will probably recall with astonishment that it was considered unfit to
adorn the dining-room of a London club."
And here are two new books by Margot Asquith! One is _My Impressions of
America_, the other continues _The Autobiography of Margot Asquith_. Of
the first of these books there is to say that it represents Mrs. Asquith's
matured impressions and will have a value that could not possibly attach
to interviews or statements she gave on this side. It also gives, for the
first time, her frank and direct analyses of the personalities of the
distinguished people whom she met in America. The continuation of her
_Autobiography_ is a different matter. Those who have read _The
Autobiography of Margot Asquith_ will be prepared for the new book. At
least, I hope they will be prepared and yet I question whether they will.
There is, after all, only one person for Mrs. Asquith to surpass, and that
is herself; and I think she has done it. This new book will add Volumes
III. and IV. to _The Autobiography of Margot Asquith_.
In _The Memoirs of Djemal Pasha: Turkey 1913-21_ will be found the
recollections of a man who was successively Military Governor of
Constantinople, Minister of Public Works and Naval Minister and who, with
Enver Bey and Talaat Bey, formed the triumvirate which dictated Turkish
policy and guided Turkey's fate after the coup d'état of 1913. I believe
these memoirs are of extraordinary interest and the greatest importance.
They give the first and only account from the Turkish side of events in
Turkey since 1913. The development of relations with Germany, France and
England immediately before the war is clearly traced, and a graphic
account is given of the first two months of the war, the escape of the
Goeben and the attempts made to keep Turkey neutral. When these failed,
Djemal Pasha was sent to govern Syria and to command the Fourth Army,
which was to conquer Egypt. The attack on the Suez Canal is described, and
then the series of operations which culminated in the British reverses in
the two battles of Gaza. Further important sections are devoted to the
revolt of the Arabs and the question of responsibility for the Armenian
massacres.
The value of _Miscellanies--Literary and Historical_, by Lord Rosebery,
consists not so much in his recollections of people as in the delight of
reading good prose. Lord Rosebery has a natural dignity and a charm of
lucid phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has
chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert
Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds
spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are
papers on Burke, on Dr. Johnson, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as
great. One group deals with Scottish History and one with the service of
the state. The last is a study of the _genius loci_ of such places of
mellow associations as Eton and the Turf. The sort of book one returns
to!
=ii=
I was going to say something about Andrew C. P. Haggard's book, _Madame de
Staël: Her Trials and Triumphs_. But so profoundly convinced am I of the
book's fascination that I shall reprint the first chapter. If this is not
worthy of Lytton Strachey, I am no judge:
"In the year 1751 a young fellow, only fourteen years of age, went to
Magdalen College at Oxford, and in the same year displayed his budding
talent by writing _The Age of Sesostris, Conqueror of Asia_, which work he
burnt in later years.
"The boy was Edward Gibbon, who, after becoming a Roman Catholic at the
age of sixteen, was sent by his father to Switzerland, to continue his
education in the house of a Calvinist minister named M. Pavilliard, under
the influence of which gentleman he became a Protestant again at Lausanne
eighteen months later.
"The young fellow, while leading the life of gaiety natural to his age in
company with a friend named Deyverdun, became an apt student of the
classics and was soon a proficient in French, in which tongue he wrote
before long as fluently as in English. With young Deyverdun he worked, and
in his company Edward Gibbon also played. After visiting frequently at the
house of the celebrated Voltaire at Monrepos, and after being present when
the distinguished French philosopher played in his own comedies and
sentimental pieces, the young fellow's thoughts soon turned to the theme
which was the continual subject of conversation of the ladies and
gentlemen who were Voltaire's guests and formed the company of amateurs
with whom the great dramatic writer was in the habit of rehearsing his
plays. This was, as might have been suspected in such a society, the theme
of love.
"As it happened, there was in the habit of visiting Lausanne a young lady
who was a perfect paragon. Her name was Suzanne Curchod, and she was half
Swiss and half French, her father being a Swiss pastor and her mother a
Frenchwoman.
"Very handsome and sprightly in appearance, the fair Suzanne was well
instructed in sciences and languages. Her wit, beauty and erudition made
her a prodigy and an object of universal admiration upon the occasion of
her visits to her relations in Lausanne. Soon an intimate connection
existed between Edward Gibbon and herself; he frequently accompanied her
to stay at her mountain home at Grassy, while at Lausanne also they
indulged in their dream of felicity. Edward loved the brilliant Suzanne
with a union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, and was in later years
proud of the fact that he was once capable of feeling such an exalted
sentiment. There is no doubt that, had he been able to consult his own
inclinations alone, Gibbon would have married Mademoiselle Curchod, but,
the time coming when he was forced to return to his home in England his
father declared that he would not hear of 'such a strange alliance.'
"'Thereupon,' says Gibbon in his autobiography, 'I yielded to my
fate--sighed as a lover, obeyed as a son, and my wound was insensibly
healed by time, absence and new habits of life.'
"These habits of life included four or five years' service in the
Hampshire Militia, in which corps Suzanne's lover became a captain, the
regiment being embodied during the period of the Seven Years' War.
"Upon returning to Lausanne, at the age of twenty-six, in 1763, Edward
Gibbon was warmly received by his old love, but he heard that she had been
flirting with others, and notably with his friend M. Deyverdun. He
himself, while now mixing with an agreeable society of twenty unmarried
young ladies who, without any chaperons, mingled with a crowd of young men
of all nations, also 'lost many hours in dissipation.'
"He was not long in showing Suzanne that he no longer found her
indispensable to his happiness, with the result that she assailed him,
although in vain, with angry reproaches. Notwithstanding that she begged
Gibbon to be her friend if no longer her lover, while vowing herself to be
confiding and tender, he acted hard-heartedly and declined to return to
his old allegiance, coldly replying: 'I feel the dangers that continued
correspondence may have for both of us.'
"It is impossible to feel otherwise than sorry for the brilliant Suzanne
at this period, as although from her subsequent manoeuvres it became
evident that her principal object in life was to obtain a rich husband,
from the manner in which she humiliated herself to him it is evident that
she was passionately in love with the author of _The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire_.
"Eventually the neglected damsel gave up the siege of an unwilling lover,
while assuring her formerly devoted Edward that the day would come 'when
he would regret the irreparable loss of the too frank and tender heart of
Suzanne Curchod.'
"Had the pair been united, one wonders what would have been the
characteristics of the offspring of an English literary man like Gibbon,
who became perhaps the world's greatest historian, and a beautiful woman
of mixed nationality, whose subsequent career, although gilded with riches
and adorned with a position of power, displays nothing above the mediocre
and commonplace.
"Edward Gibbon's fame, which was not long in coming, was his own, and will
remain for so long as a love of history and literature exists in the
world, whereas that of Suzanne Curchod rests upon two circumstances--the
first that she was once the sweetheart of Gibbon, the second that she was
the mother of a Madame de Staël.
"When finally cast off by the Englishman, the Swiss Pastor's daughter
remembered that, if pretty, she was poor, and had her way to make in the
world. She commenced to play fast and loose with a M. Correvon, a rich
lawyer, whom she said she would marry 'if she had only to live with him
for four months in each year.'
"The next lover was a pastor, who was as mercenary as herself, for he
threw her over for a lady with a large fortune. After this failure to
establish herself, Suzanne became tired of seeking a husband in
Switzerland and went to Paris as the companion of the rich and handsome
Madame Vermoneux, the supposed mistress of Jacques Necker, the rich Swiss
banker, who was established in the French capital. Once in Paris, it was
not long before by her seductions Suzanne succeeded in supplanting Madame
Vermoneux in the still young banker's affections, with the result that she
married him in 1764.
"Gibbon, whom she had last seen in 1763, returned to the side of his
former love when she was at length safely married to another man. We find
him writing in 1765, to his friend Lord Sheffield, formerly Mr. Holroyd,
that he had spent ten delicious days in Paris about the end of June. 'She
was very fond of me, and the husband was particularly civil.' He continues
confidentially: 'Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening
to supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife--what an impertinent
security!'
"It was in the month of April in the following year, 1766, that was born
Madame Necker's only child, Anne Louise Germaine, who was destined to
become one of the most remarkable women of modern times. From the great
literary talent displayed by this wonderfully precocious child from
girlhood, it is difficult not to imagine but that in some, if merely
spiritual, way the genius of her mother's old lover had descended through
that mother's brain as a mantle upon herself. That she learnt to look upon
Gibbon with admiration at an early age is sure. Michelet informs us that
owing to the praises showered upon the historian by M. Necker, Germaine
was anxious, as her mother had been before her, to become Gibbon's wife.
She was, however, destined to have another husband--or rather we should
say two other husbands."
=iii=
_Recollections and Reflections_ by a Woman of No Importance has added
greatly to the number of this author's readers, gained in the first
instance by her _Memories Discreet and Indiscreet_, which was followed by
_More Indiscretions_.
_Recollections and Reflections_ consists of random memories of lords and
ladies, sportsmen, Kings, Queens, cooks, chauffeurs and Empresses, related
with a great deal of philosophy and insight and no little wit.
There are stories of Gladstone's lovemaking, of Empress Eugenie and the
diamond the soldier swallowed, of Balfour's hats, Henry Irving's swelled
head and the cosmetics of Disraeli. There are stories of etiquette at a
hair-dressers' ball side by side with comments on Kitchener's waltzing.
Lady Angela Forbes was the daughter of the fourth Earl of Rosslyn and the
youngest child of one of the largest and most prominent families in
England. Kitchener, Lord Roberts, Disraeli, the Kaiser, Prince Edward--she
has dined or sailed or hunted with them all on the most informal terms.
She tells, with engaging frankness, in _Memories and Base Details_, of the
gaieties, the mistakes and tragedies of herself and her friends.
It was Baron von Margutti who informed the Emperor Francis Joseph in 1914
that Serbia had rejected his ultimatum. The character of the Emperor is a
moot question. _The Emperor Francis Joseph and His Times_, reminiscences
by Baron von Margutti, is by a man who knew the Emperor intimately and who
knew the men and women who surrounded him daily. Baron von Margutti met
all the distinguished European figures, such as Edward VII, Emperor
Wilhelm, Czar Nicholas and the Empress Eugenie who came to Austria to
visit. He watched from a particularly favourable vantage point the deft
moves of secret diplomacy which interlaced the various governments.
Lord Frederic Hamilton, born in 1856, the fourth son of the first Duke of
Abercorn, was educated at Harrow, was formerly in the British Diplomatic
Service and served successively as Secretary of the British Embassies in
Berlin and Petrograd and the Legations at Lisbon and Buenos Aires. He has
travelled much and, besides being in Parliament, was editor of the Pall
Mall Magazine till 1900. The popularity of his books of reminiscences is
explained by the fascinating way in which he tells a story or illuminates
a character. Other books of memoirs have been more widely celebrated but I
know of none which has made friends who were more enthusiastic. _The
Vanished Pomps of Yesterday_, _Days Before Yesterday_ and _Here, There and
Everywhere_ are constantly in demand.
But, all along, a surprise has been in store and the time is now here to
disclose it! The talent for this delightful species of memoirising runs
through the family; and Sir Frederic Hamilton's brother, Lord Ernest
Hamilton, proves it. Lord Ernest is the author of _Forty Years On_, a new
book quite as engaging as _Here, There and Everywhere_, and the rest of
Sir Frederic's. Word from London is that Sir Frederic will have no new
book this year; he steps aside with a gallant bow for Lord Ernest. I have
been turning pages in _Forty Years On_ and reading about such matters as
the Copley curse, school life at Harrow where Shifner and others bowed the
knee to Baal, bull fights in Peru and adventures in the Klondike.
Personally the most amusing moments of the book I find to be those in
which Lord Ernest describes his experiments in speaking ancient Greek in
modern Greece. But this is perhaps because I, too, have tried to speak
syllables of Xenophon while being rapidly driven (in a barouche) about
Patras--with the same lamentable results. It is enough to unhinge the
reason, the pronunciation of modern Greek, I mean. But maybe your hobby is
bathing? Lord Ernest has a word in praise of Port Antonio, Jamaica, as a
bathing ground.
What he says about hummingbirds--but I mustn't! _Forty Years On_ is a mine
of interest and each reader ought to be pretty well left to work it for
himself.