TWENTY-FIVE
_By Beverley Nichols_
PRELUDE
PATCHWORK
SELF
25
BEING A YOUNG MAN’S CANDID RECOLLECTIONS
OF HIS ELDERS AND BETTERS
_By_
BEVERLEY NICHOLS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
25
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
IN WHICH SOME ENGLISH GENTLEMEN SET OUT
ON A STRANGE JOURNEY 11
CHAPTER TWO
PRESIDENTS--LEAN AND FAT 21
CHAPTER THREE
CONTAINING A FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR AMERICAN
VULGARITY 31
CHAPTER FOUR
JOHN MASEFIELD, ROBERT BRIDGES, W. B. YEATS 36
CHAPTER FIVE
IN WHICH MR. G. K. CHESTERTON REVEALS HIS
FEARS AND HIS HOPES 50
CHAPTER SIX
IN WHICH MRS. ASQUITH BEHAVES WITH CHARACTERISTIC
ENERGY 56
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL LOSES HIS
TEMPER, AND MR. HORATIO BOTTOMLEY WINS
HIS DEBATE 62
CHAPTER EIGHT
BEING AN IMPRESSION OF TWO LADIES OF GENIUS 73
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH WE MEET A GHOST 84
CHAPTER TEN
IN WHICH I JOURNEY TO GREECE 99
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONCERNING THE CONFIDENCES OF A QUEEN 112
CHAPTER TWELVE
STRANGE TALES OF A MONARCH AND A NOVELIST 120
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FROM THE REGAL TO THE RIDICULOUS 133
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN WHICH SIR WILLIAM ORPEN AND MRS. ELINOR
GLYN REVEAL THEIR SOULS 146
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CONCERNING TWO ARTISTS IN A DIFFERENT
SPHERE 156
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HANGED BY THE NECK 165
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TWO PLAIN AND ONE COLOURED 174
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A LAMB IN WOLF’S CLOTHING 183
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TWO BIG MEN AND ONE MEDIUM 189
CHAPTER TWENTY
A MEMORY--AND SOME SONGS 201
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HICKS--HICKS--AND NOTHING BUT HICKS 210
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHOWING HOW A GENIUS WORSHIPPED DEVILS IN
THE MOUNTAINS 218
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A DEFENCE OF DRAMATIC CRITICS 224
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IN WHICH WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM MAKES
A DELICATE GRIMACE 232
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IN WHICH MICHAEL ARLEN DISDAINS PINK
CHESTNUTS 240
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CONTAINING THE HIDEOUS TRUTH ABOUT NOEL
COWARD 248
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IN WHICH I ALLOW MYSELF TO BE ENTIRELY
SENTIMENTAL 255
_to_
GEORGE AND BLANCHE
FOREWORD
Twenty-five seems to me the latest age at which anybody should write an
autobiography. It has an air of finality about it, as though one had
clambered to the summit of a great hill, and were waving good-bye to
some very distant country which can never be revisited.
A delicious age, you may agree, but an age too irresponsible for the
production of autobiographies. Why, I ask you? The bones of a young man
of twenty-five (according to the medical profession) are duly set, his
teeth are ranged in their correct places, and many arid pastures have
been made beautiful by the sowing of his wild oats. Why then, not write
about some of the exciting people he has seen, while they still excite
him?
That is the essence of the whole matter, to write of these things
before it is too late. This is an age of boredom, and by the time one
is thirty, I am terribly afraid that the first flush of enthusiasm may
have worn off. It is quite possible that by then I shall no longer be
thrilled by the sight of Arnold Bennett twisting his forelock at a
first night, and that the vision of Elinor Glyn eating quantities of
cold ham at the Bath Club (a sight which, to-day, never fails to amuse)
will not move me in the least.
It is also possible that my indignations will have suffered a similar
cooling, that I shall no longer feel faintly sick at the sight of the
new Regent Street, and shall be able to view the idolization by the
British people of Mr. George Robey, if not with approbation, at least
with tolerance.
It is to be hoped that this will not be the case, but you must admit,
from your own experience of young men who have grown up, that it is
quite on the cards. They are faithless to their first hates, they have
forgotten their first loves. They turn from the dreams of Oxford to the
nightmares of the city, just because the dream is difficult, and the
nightmare is so easy. In fact, they grow old.
That is why I have written this book. And from the decrepitude of
thirty I shall write another on the same lines. It will be called
‘Making the Most of Twenty-Eight.’
B. N.
CHAPTER ONE
In which some English Gentlemen set out on a Strange Journey
Had one been a Prime Minister there would be every reason for talking
of one’s first tooth and devoting a chapter or two to its effect upon
the history of our times. There would then follow, in succeeding
volumes, sketches of the youthful genius from every aspect, with
appropriate legends at the top of each page, such as ‘Backward at
School,’ ‘A Daring Frolic,’ ‘Visit to the Tomb of William Pitt.’
But since one has not been a Prime Minister, and since all first teeth
greatly resemble one another, and since most small boys are very much
alike (for if they aren’t, they are horrid)--since, in fact, there is
no excuse for being dull, we must begin by making things happen. And I
can think of no better moment for ringing up the curtain than when, at
the age of nineteen, two months before the Armistice, I was given leave
to go to America as Secretary to the British Universities Mission to
the United States.
It sounds deadly, but it was really exceedingly amusing, for this
mission, before it finished its tour (which was largely for propaganda
purposes), was to come in touch with most of the leading men in
America, from President Wilson downwards. Even in England, there were
celebrities hanging round us, all telling us with various degrees of
pomposity the sort of things which Americans expected Englishmen to do,
and the best way not to do them.
Ian Hay was the first man who gave me any information about America
that was worth having. I can see him now, standing against a window in
the Ministry of Information, a tall, slim figure, in a rather shabby
uniform, saying:
‘Whatever else you do, don’t refer to the Americans as “children.” It’s
such a damned insult.’
I demanded further suggestions.
‘Dozens, if you want them. Don’t leave your boots outside the hotel
door. Don’t get ruffled if a porter slaps you on the back and calls
you “boy.” Don’t be surprised if they refer to their country as the
peculiar property of the Almighty. For all you know they may be right.
It’s a marvellous country. And the people! Lovable isn’t the word for
them. They’ll kill you with kindness.’
All this I had heard before, but from Ian Hay it sounded different. It
is not surprising that he was a success in the States. He is very like
his own heroes, who, even when they are talking fourteen to the dozen,
give one the impression of being strong and silent. Add to this quality
a charming smile, the faintest possible flavour of a Scottish accent,
and an air of modesty which is not usually associated with the Creators
of best-sellers, and you will have the main ingredients of one of our
most typical authors.
If Ian Hay had accompanied us on our Mission he would have had
material for a comic masterpiece of English literature. There was the
representative of Oxford, who was to lose his boots in every American
hotel we were to frequent. There was dear old Sir Henry Jones, whose
Scottish-Welsh accents, combined with a heavy beard, an almost complete
lack of teeth, and a heavenly smile, were so to intrigue American
audiences; Professor J--, the brilliant Irish scientist, who was
our official pessimist, and foretold shipwreck, train-wreck, and
motor-wreck with unfailing hope; Sir Henry Miers, from Manchester,
cool, calm, and capable, who found the Oxford representative’s boots
for him and helped to interpret some of Sir Henry Jones’s more obscure
utterances; and last, but certainly not least, Sir Arthur Shipley, the
urbane Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, who never lost his boots, who
spoke perfect English, who had always exactly the right word to say
to exactly the right person, and without whom we should all probably
have been arrested within twenty-four hours of our arrival as a band of
undesirable mountebanks.
I wonder if all the English missions which tour the United States,
which march in dignified processions through the streets, which blink
up at the skyscrapers, which sneeze over the grape-juice and stagger
back from the serried headlines of the newspapers ... I wonder if they
are all made up from such human and fallible men as was ours.
Take the case of Sir Henry Jones, one of the sweetest characters and
the most generous men I have ever met. He had, in his head, a tooth.
One tooth, and no more. The first memory I have of him was in the early
morning, when we were ploughing our way through a choppy sea, with the
coast of Scotland misty to the starboard. He put his head through my
porthole, and complained bitterly that there was no fresh water in his
cabin. ‘What did he want fresh water for?’ I asked, looking sleepily at
his flowing beard. He waved his toothbrush through the window, and I
gave him my carafe. I wish we were all such optimists. And I hope this
story is not too impertinent. A very faint hope, I fear.
Again, Professor J--. It is with no lack of respect that I refer to the
more humorous side of his character. Any scientist, from San Francisco
to Petrograd, will tell you what the world of astronomy owes to his
researches into the theory of the Martian canals. Anybody but a fool
would pay homage to his intellect. None the less, for sheer pessimism I
have never met his like.
‘I took a bath this morning,’ he said to us, one day at breakfast, ‘and
I did it at the peril of my life.’
We wondered what made him think that a bath was so particularly
perilous. He explained. In taking his bath it had been necessary for
him to take off his patent waistcoat. It had also been necessary for
him to take off his clothes. In view of the fact that we were at the
moment, in a part of the ocean which was regarded with particular
affection by German submarines, both actions had been highly
inadvisable. The patent waistcoat for obvious reasons. The dangers of
the state of nature, however, he described at greater length. ‘If a
body enters the water,’ he said, ‘death takes place by chill just as
often as by actual drowning. I have made researches into the matter and
I find that a body covered with clothes does not chill so fast as a
body with nothing on. Hence the danger of baths in a situation such as
this. Supposing a torpedo had hit us while I was in my bath!’
While we were on the water, a torpedo did actually hit a liner off the
Coast of Ireland, though it was not our own vessel. As soon as the news
came through, J-- was convinced that one of his own relatives, an aged
aunt, must have been on board. The fact that she had been bedridden
for eight years, the fact that there was no conceivable reason why she
should have got up at all, far less have ventured across the Atlantic,
weighed with him not at all. He was born like that, and I think he even
took a certain grim pleasure in it, realizing the futility of human
existence.
When I add that there were in our Mission two ladies, Miss Spurgeon and
Miss Sedgwick, the introductory passage to this book is complete.
* * * * *
Have you ever noticed--you who have crossed the Atlantic--the
extraordinary effect that the Statue of Liberty has upon those who
pass for the first time beneath its shadow? It brings out all sorts of
hidden traits in even the most secretive of the passengers. Men who
have spent the entire voyage in the bar, whom nobody would accuse of
sentimentality, rush out and stand strictly to attention, chin well
out, eyes fixed on that impressive brazen lady, much as a dog would fix
its eyes on its mistress. Young and flapping ladies, who have lain on
the decks in attitudes which they apparently consider seductive, stand
with open mouths and unpowdered noses, trying to remember the date
of the American Declaration of Independence. Fathers bring out their
children and regard the statue with an air of proprietorship as though
they themselves had been largely responsible for its erection. And as
for the poets....
We had on board one rather celebrated young poet who I am sure will
never forget the Statue of Liberty--whether or no the statue will ever
forget him is another question. His name was Robert Nichols, and he
was being sent out by the English Government as the most accomplished
of all our war poets. He had created rather a sensation at home by
his volume, _Ardours and Endurances_, which contained, in the opinion
of the critics, much the best war poetry which had been produced.
During the voyage over I fear he had not been much in the mood for
writing poetry, unless it were of the style of Rupert Brooke’s dreadful
‘Channel Crossing,’ for he had been groaning with sea-sickness in his
cabin. But the statue cured him of all that. As soon as he heard that
we were about to pass under it, he emerged pale but determined and came
up to me, where I was standing by the railings.
‘I’m going to salute the statue,’ he said.
‘Well, hadn’t you better get your hat?’ I asked. ‘You can’t salute
without a hat on.’
‘I don’t care a damn about the hat,’ replied Robert, and without any
more ado, swung his hand behind his ear, where it remained quivering
like any guardsman’s. Further conversation under these circumstances
would, I realized, be sacrilege not only on the spirit of liberty but
on the spirit of poetry as well, and so I held my peace. But it was a
pity that Robert had somewhat miscalculated the distance we still had
to run, for after a few minutes he was forced, from sheer cramp, to
lower his arm again. It would have been better if he had got his hat.
I fear that Robert Nichols did not greatly enjoy himself in the States.
He could not get that ‘platform’ which had been anticipated for him,
and he always looked a little afraid, when one saw him on Fifth
Avenue, as though a skyscraper would fall on him before he had finished
his last sonnet. He might indeed have been reading a Keats poem:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact’ry
Hold like full garners the full-ripen’d grain ...
All of this, however, is not getting us to America, to Presidents and
millionaires, and all those other engaging things.
Landing in America in this autumn of 1918, for an Englishman at least,
was exactly like a page out of an H. G. Wells novel. The aeroplanes
circling round us, the little pilot boat coming with newspapers that
told us the end of the war was in sight, the sudden glimpse of a new
radiant continent, with houses sparkling with a million lights--it was
the lights that we found most surprising. After stumbling about in
darkened streets at home, after being given hell by the police if we so
much as allowed a chink of light to escape through the window (for fear
of air raids, of course), it seemed almost indecent to see this blaze
of light coming from every window. In absolute exultation, as soon as
I reached my room (we were staying at the Columbia University Club), I
turned on all the lights, drew the curtain, and threw open the window,
thinking--‘there, look at that, and be damned to you,’ the remark being
addressed to imaginary zeppelins, thousands of miles away.
And then--the banquet that night! There was butter. Lots of it, making
the pale wisps of grease on which we had lately fed seem like some
loathsome memory of a nightmare. There was sugar, not done up in little
bags, and shrunk to the size of a pea, but fat, glistening sugar,
shining and sparkling like any diamond. There was meat, not brought
to one in exchange for a coupon, but perched on the plate, proud and
abundant. Sir Henry Jones’s one tooth was working overtime that night.
At this dinner I met my First Great American--Nicholas Murray
Butler--President of the Columbia University.
For the benefit of English readers I should here point out that the
Presidents of great American Universities occupy far more prominent
positions in the life of the nation than the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford
or Cambridge. These latter gentlemen are hardly known to the public at
all. The only Vice-Chancellor of Oxford of whom the newspaper-reading
public has ever heard is Ex-Vice-Chancellor Farnell, who set the whole
University on edge by medieval restrictions, and who has now retired
to the obscurity from which his faintly ridiculous personality should
never have been dragged. Apart from this regrettable exception, English
Vice-Chancellors have usually figured only in small paragraphs at the
bottom of the sober columns of _The Times_, when they are reported as
having given degrees to various earnest youths and maidens.
In America it is very different. Here, when the President of a great
college delivers himself of an utterance, great treble headings
announce the fact in all the principal newspapers. He is given almost
as much publicity as a successful horse. His judgments are made the
subject of leading articles, his portrait is almost as well known as
that of the baser type of politician in England. I do not know whether
this is because knowledge is more venerated in the United States than
in England. It just happens to be the case.
Well, Nicholas Murray Butler was a super-President, and, next to
President Wilson and Charlie Chaplin, he was the most ‘talked-of’ man
in the States. As I said before, he was the First Great American I met,
and it is with a feeling of regret that I have to admit that I was not
in the least impressed. He struck me as the epitome of the commonplace.
Charming, yes--a dear, kind smile, a loud and penetrating voice,
but--my God! what a mind! It was stocked with every platitude that has
bored us since Adam first yawned into the disillusioned face of Eve.
He made a speech. Such a speech. It was filled with tremendous pauses,
in which the hand would be raised, and the finger held aloft, and then,
like the booming of a gun, the platitude. For example. Silence. A row
of expectant faces, and eager eyes. A row of set mouths (except of
those who were munching salted almonds). And then ... ‘I say to you,
and I say it as my considered opinion, that War is a terrible thing. It
is a cruel thing, ladies and gentlemen, a brutal thing. But ...’ again
the silence, and the munching mouths are stilled ... ‘wars happen. They
occur. They break out. They are declared. They exist. They ...’
Oh dear, I thought. If all American speeches are like this, I am in
for a bad time. Of course, we were very soon to discover that they
weren’t, and that American oratory is among the finest in the world.
But Nicholas Murray Butler was a bad beginning. It is a matter of
absolute mystery to me how people listen to such things, or how they
read his books. For example, I picked up, the other day, a book by
him called _Is America Worth Saving?_ It was incredible. It contained
page after page of the dullest moralization, page after page devoted
to the proving that black is generally black, and that white, more
often than not, is white. And yet, when you get him by himself, Butler
is better. When we went to see him at Columbia University he kept Sir
Arthur Shipley and myself giggling faintly for twenty minutes over his
description of some of the difficulties of the educational career. I
remember in particular one reply he made which was typical of a certain
broad, dry humour. Sir Arthur had asked him, with reference to a little
party of English boys who had gone out west, if they were still at San
Francisco.
‘Not always so very still,’ replied Butler with a smile.
I had a long talk with Nicholas Murray Butler, but I gained no
enlightenment from it. He told me that the young had a great advantage
over the old because the young had longer to live, but after all the
old had an advantage over the young because they had lived longer. Or
some equally penetrating generalization. After talking to him for ten
minutes, in an atmosphere of linked Star Spangled Banners and Union
Jacks, I came to the conclusion that he probably had so original and
destructive a mind that he was forced to send out this smoke-barrage of
commonplace in order not to be arrested as a revolutionary.
CHAPTER TWO
Presidents--Lean and Fat
If you wish to sip the very essence of democracy, you must pay a visit
to the White House and talk with the President of the United States.
The more urgent your business, the more stirring the occasion, the more
completely unpretentious will be your reception.
We arrived in Washington in late October, already somewhat battered by
an existence in which every meal was a banquet, and on the day after
our arrival found ourselves drawing up at the gates of the White House,
duly attired, cleaned and brushed, in order to make the most favourable
impression on President Wilson.
The simplicity of the first home of America is, in some ways, more
alarming than the pomp of an ordinary Court. There were no beautiful
footmen, no drifting diplomats to waft us higher and higher until we
were at length admitted into the presence. Indeed, it was more like
going to see a dentist than a President.
We were shown into a pleasant white room, with the usual dentist’s
array of newspapers and periodicals, slightly soiled by many democratic
thumbs. At this point it might be mentioned that the pet mascot of the
Mission also entered the White House with us, concealed in an overcoat.
This was Cuthbert, a stuffed rabbit, which had been presented by a
frivolous friend to the Mission on our departure from England. Cuthbert
had been a sure help in trouble and had grown more than human. When the
sea was rough, he would be propped up on the edge, looking over, in
case he might be overcome. When it was calm he would be allowed to bask
in the sunshine. And when we were passing under the Statue of Liberty
he was stood to attention until the statue was passed. He couldn’t
salute, because toy rabbits aren’t made that way.
Cuthbert was adored by every member of the Mission, except the
representative of Oxford, who thought that such things were naughty. He
was taken to the tops of skyscrapers to survey New York by night. He
was taken on the Hudson to survey New York by day. And I was damned if
I was going to allow Cuthbert to depart from America without entering
the White House. And so, he was carefully stuffed into the capacious
pocket of Sir Arthur’s overcoat (unknown, one must in fairness admit,
to Sir Arthur). He was not taken, however, to see the President. There
are limits.
Mr. Lawson, the Secretary for the Interior, was with us when we
entered, but the real thrill of the morning was to come when a
manservant poked his head through the door and said, ‘Are you men
waiting to see the President?’ We all bridled slightly at this historic
question. ‘How divinely American!’ we thought. Were we ‘men’ waiting
to see the President? Men. _Men_, if you please. The world’s greatest
authority on bugs. A man. The world’s greatest authority on the canals
of Mars. A man. The world’s greatest authority on Greek something or
other. A man. Men--all men. Except, of course, the women. We said, yes,
we were waiting to see him.
‘Then you’d best come along with me,’ said the manservant.
We came along with him. We came along through a passage, from which
outside you could see the short drive, the white buildings of
Washington, the bustling life of the city passing by, and we stepped
through some folding doors, on to a great space of highly polished
floor, in the centre of which, like a waxwork, was standing the world’s
most important figure--President Wilson.
The first thing that struck me was that he looked very clean.
Immaculate. Not that I had expected to find him dirty. But there
was something about the stiff white cuffs, the gleaming collar, the
sparkling pince-nez, the beautifully pressed trousers, that suggested
he had dressed in a disinfected room with the assistance of a highly
efficient valet, who had put on his clothes with pincers. Again the
dentist feeling. He _was_ like a dentist. Or a distinguished surgeon.
In silence we were introduced, and slid over the polished floor until
we were grouped round him in a sort of semicircle. I had a ridiculous
feeling that we were all going to sing ‘Here we come gathering
nuts-in-May.’ Everything was suddenly so dignified. No question now of
being mere ‘men.’ We were all diplomats, in the centre of the universe.
And then Wilson began to speak, quietly and calmly, weighing his
words, telling us exactly what was passing in his mind. I remember
being struck by two things--foolish, no doubt. The first was a feeling
of strangeness that he should speak with an American accent. One had
imagined him as belonging to the world, forgetting that after all, he
only belonged to America. The second was that he was just an ordinary
man, in a hideously difficult position, applying the ordinary standards
of decent conduct to the world situation.
He talked about affairs in France, compared them with that of last
year, and drew conclusions. And then he said something extraordinarily
interesting:
‘My principal difficulty,’ he remarked, ‘is that we are dealing with
people whom we can’t trust. I wonder if you can understand how baffling
that is, when one is honestly trying to find a way out? If Germany were
like any other country, if we could count on certain promises, certain
assurances being fulfilled, then we should know where we are. But we
can’t count (he almost shouted the last words) on that. I write a note.
I receive an answer. I write another note. I receive another answer.
I _go on writing notes_. And I am left in exactly the same situation
as before, because I have learnt, from bitter experience, that the
promises contained in that answer will be broken as soon as the first
convenient opportunity presents itself.’
All the time he spoke he stood looking straight in front of him,
with his hands behind his back. He looked terribly tired. I gathered
afterwards that he had scarcely time to sleep, that often he would be
up all night trying to unravel the hopeless tangle of lies and evasions
which was almost daily served up for him.
He continued in this strain for some time, until there suddenly came
into his voice a note of passion, ‘America is not going to leave the
Hohenzollerns in power. It would mean leaving a running sore in the
heart of Europe.’ He made a little grimace of disgust.
I won’t attempt to give any long précis of his remarks. Generalizations
are never interesting, and even if they were, you can discover all of
them in the newspapers of the period. Sir Arthur had a talk with him
on the way out about his life at Princeton, and with his usual genius,
managed to smooth the wrinkles out of his face and to make him laugh.
The last words I heard him say were in reference to the Princeton
professors. ‘They kicked me upstairs,’ he said. A very long way
upstairs, most people would think.
That was one of the most interesting mornings of my life. I only wish
that Cuthbert could have been concealed behind the curtain.
* * * * *
Where Wilson impressed one with a feeling of respect (if not
reverence), Taft filled one with a bouncing spirit of good will--a sort
of ‘Pippa Passes’ spirit--that as long as Taft was in being, all must
be right with the United States.
I met him at a dinner given about this time in Washington, and was at
once captivated by him, because he seemed to make a point of being
particularly charming to the people who didn’t matter. There was a
tremendous reception after dinner, and half the time Taft was standing,
a round Colossus, talking to persons of no importance, and ignoring the
crowd of millionaires and diplomats who clustered round him.
Somehow or other, I found myself talking to him. He said:
‘Well, young man, and aren’t you getting rather sick of trotting round
with a lot of old professors?’
I indignantly disclaimed any such suggestion (which happened to be
quite untrue).
However, Taft only winked, and said Englishmen were always so tactful,
weren’t they, winked again, heaved his shoulders, and shook. Then,
apropos of nothing he said:
‘I heard a wonderful story yesterday about a Scotchman.’
One has always just heard wonderful stories about Scotchmen, but not
always from Ex-Presidents of the United States, so I listened politely.
‘A Scotchman,’ said Taft, speaking in a loud whisper, and keeping one
eye on the crowd of millionaires behind him, ‘went out one cold day on
the links, did the whole eighteen holes, tramped back, and at the end
of it all gave his caddy threepence.’
Here he heaved again. I wondered if that was the end of the story, when
Taft continued:
‘The caddy looked at the man and said, “D’ye ken I can tell yer fortune
by these three pennies?”’
(Heavens! I thought. He can speak Scotch. No wonder they made him
President of the United States.)
‘The man shook his head,’ said Taft, ‘and the caddy looked at the first
penny.
‘“The fir-r-rst penny,” he said, “tells me that you’re a Scotsman. Eh?”
‘“Yes.”
‘“The second tells me that you’re a bachelor.”
‘“Yes.”
‘“And the thir-rd penny tells me that yer father-r was a bachelor too.”’
And with that Taft turned on his heel, roaring with laughter, leaving
at least one young Englishman a staunch Anglo-American for the rest of
his life.
* * * * *
It was also in Washington that I first met Elihu Root. Everybody, ever
since my arrival had said, ‘Ah! but you must meet Elihu Root,’ rather
in the same sort of way as Sydney people say, ‘Ah! but you must see
our harbour,’ or Cambridge people, ‘Ah! but you must see our Backs.’
He seemed to have a quite unique reputation--the reputation of being a
thoroughly honest politician. I used to ask, ‘Why in that case is he
not made President?’ And the reply invariably was, ‘He is too good, too
honest, too impeccable.’ All of which seemed very strange.
However, when one met him, the mystery was explained. Elihu Root struck
me as ‘a very parfit gentle knight.’ His conversation was like a man
thinking aloud. He shut his eyes and frowned and then spoke, and you
knew that the man was telling you what he really thought. It was at one
of the inevitable banquets that he first appeared, and after it was
over I boldly went up to him and asked him some sort of question about
Anglo-American friendship.
‘That rests with you, young man,’ he said, and shut his eyes. ‘Youth
to youth, young heart to young heart’--and he sighed a little
sentimentally.
I asked him the usual stock question which one asks on these
occasions--if there was no means of dissipating some of the ridiculous
clouds of mistrust and delusion which still hung over the Atlantic,
blotting out the true features of each nation from one another; if
there was no means of bringing the Press, at least, to realize the
importance of the Anglo-American ideal.
‘Ah--the Press. Did you ever study the question of sovereignty at
college?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever tried to put your finger on a certain monarch, a certain
body of men, a certain institute and say, “Here is sovereignty--here
is the ultimate authority”? And have you, when you have decided that
sovereignty lies here, or there, suddenly realized that the true power
still eludes you? Have you realized that those men are elected by the
people and that in consequence sovereignty lies in the people? And
have you, going even further, realized that the force that makes the
people vote, i.e., the force that moulds the people’s wills, is really
the true sovereign? Think about it. And then you will realize the true
importance of the remark you made to me just now.’
All this was delivered with eyes shut and with head tilted back. A
very straight and honest man, Mr. Root, typical of all that is best in
American life.
* * * * *
From Washington we travelled to Boston, staying with President Lowell
of Harvard. Harvard made us all feel a little depressed. It was so very
rich, so very efficient, so very prosperous, so entirely different
from the bankrupt universities of England. I looked with green eyes on
undergraduates’ rooms fitted with telephones and bathrooms, and served
with a central heating apparatus that made the frozen apartments of
Balliol seem a little torturous.
And then, after Boston, Chicago. Our arrival in Chicago was
sensational. Mr. Hearst, the newspaper proprietor, had declared the
war to be over, although it was still raging gaily, and had another
forty-eight hours to run. As a result of Mr. Hearst’s enterprise,
all the country people within a hundred miles of Chicago had come to
‘celebrate,’ and they travelled with us, dressed in their best, and
taking liberal swigs of whisky. When we actually arrived, we found a
mad city. Paper littered the streets, bells clanged everywhere. And
when we came to the club (decency forbids me to mention which one it
was) every waiter in the place was drunk, and we had to tread our way
upstairs over recumbent figures, while our bags remained in the hall.
‘Terrible,’ said the representative of Oxford. ‘I am beginning to
understand why the Americans have so urgent a need for Prohibition.’
I am afraid I did not agree with him. It all seemed to me very jolly.
For one thing, all the telephone books in the club had been taken to
the roof where they had, throughout the day, been slowly torn into
little pieces by intoxicated fingers, in order that the streets might
have a festive and confetti-like appearance. As a result, though we
could be rung up, we could not ring up, and that, for the secretary
of an educational mission was, I assure you, a blessing not at all in
disguise.
* * * * *
However, that was one of the only two occasions when I ever saw anybody
intoxicated in America. The other was some weeks later when we were
down in Texas. We had been travelling all night, and we emerged, one
cold morning before breakfast, at the town of--(I had better leave it
blank), to visit the local university. Half the professional staff were
lined up on the platform to meet us, and they certainly had the warmest
ideas of hospitality, for from the overcoat pockets of at least half
a dozen of the more venerable members of the staff protruded the neck
of a bottle of rye whisky. Now rye whisky is, at all times, a potent
drink, but taken before breakfast, on a cold morning, it is not only
potent, it is deadly. Nor was this all. For when we had driven to the
university, we were greeted by a festive board at which the chief item
of diet appeared to be egg-nog, well flavoured with rum. However, we
all enjoyed ourselves very much, though I fear that this part of the
tour cannot have been very fruitful from the educational point of
view, however much it may have strengthened the Anglo-American ties of
friendship.
CHAPTER THREE
Containing a Fruitless Search for American Vulgarity
I noticed more and more in America that vulgarity (which one finds, of
course, all over the world, even in the South Sea Islands), seemed to
be in inverse ratio to wealth. The people who were really tiresome,
who talked about their automobiles and their incomes, and their
emeralds, and their trips to Europe, were nearly always the people
with comparatively small incomes. They might be rich, but they weren’t
‘rolling,’ like the Goulds or the Vanderbilts.
For example, a perfectly appalling little woman to whose box at the
opera I was once unwillingly lured, suddenly, during an _entr’acte_,
produced from her stocking a cheque for a hundred thousand dollars,
and waved it in my face, saying, ‘Say, what d’you think of that for a
birthday present?’ A most unsavoury proceeding, and as I afterwards
discovered, a complete fake. The woman’s husband had not a hundred
thousand dollars in the world, and went bankrupt only a few weeks later.
How entirely different are the super-millionaires! They have enough
money to roof their houses in gold and diamonds, but they behave
with the simplicity of an English parson. It seems foolish to have
to say it, and one’s only excuse is that there is still in England a
ridiculous prejudice against rich Americans.
It would be a good thing if people who have such a prejudice could meet
a man like, for example, Jack Pierpont Morgan. No nicer creature ever
trod the earth, in spite of his mansions in New York, Grosvenor Square,
Scotland, Cannes, and a few other places. He was one of the last
people I saw in New York, and one of the best.
One cannot think of Jack Morgan, of course, without thinking of his
library, although it is somewhat depressing for an Englishman to think
of it, since so vast a multitude of English treasures have found their
way there. When he showed me over it I was absolutely staggered by the
collection of our manuscripts which he has amassed. There is hardly a
novelist or poet of any repute whose faded pages are not treasured in
this house. And not only their manuscripts, but their portraits, their
personal belongings, in fact anything of interest that is even vaguely
connected with them.
I was browsing round among these treasures when I suddenly saw, under
a glass case, a thrilling object. It was a little lock of hair, bound
together with a piece of ribbon, and underneath was a label which read:
‘A lock of the hair of Keats. Given to Shelley by Keats’ friend--’ And
then there was a description of the time and place at which the lock
had been given.
This object so excited me that I could not drag myself away from it.
Jack Morgan came up.
‘What are you looking at?’ he said. ‘Keats’ hair? Like to hold it for a
minute?’
He produced a key from his pocket, undid the case and put the precious
thing into my hand. I felt an almost schoolboy emotion at the thought
that this hair had grown from the head in which the Ode to a Grecian
Urn had been conceived.
Suddenly Morgan said, ‘Give it to me for a moment.’ Reluctantly I
handed it over. And then, marvel of marvels, he extracted a single hair
from the lock--(a long, curly one) put it on a piece of paper, dropped
a spot of sealing wax on one end of it and then wrote, as a sort of
testimony:
‘Keats’ hair. From a lock in my possession. J. P. Morgan.’
This hair he gave to me, and, as all writers of autobiographies so
constantly assert, ‘it is one of my most treasured possessions.’ After
he had done that, he took off the key from its ring, handed it to his
secretary and said:
‘That’s the last hair from that lock that I give away. If we take any
more we shan’t have a lock, we’ll have a bald patch. Don’t you let me
have that key--not if a dozen young Englishmen come along and beg for
it on their bended knees.’
Morgan is like a father among his children when he moves among these
marvels. He pretends to know nothing very much about them, but he
knows a great deal. He knew, for example, what I had never quite
understood--the exact sequence in which Poe had written ‘The Bells.’
Poe’s manuscripts seemed to convey a special charm for him, as indeed
they might, since Poe was incomparably the greatest creative genius
that America has produced. His manuscripts were the very reverse
of what one would have expected. There were no wild scrawls, no
blotches, no hasty writing. On the contrary, they were all beautifully
transcribed on clean paper, in a hand that would have won a prize in
the copybook of a schoolboy.
I fell quite in love with American newspapers--bad taste, I
suppose--but quite comprehensible if you have strength enough to
survive the first shock of them. Everybody has written everything that
there is to be written about American journalism, and I won’t add to
it. But one episode does deserve to be recorded as a classic example of
New World enterprise.
The two ladies of our Mission, after a few weeks of racket and bustle
and sleeping-cars, arrived at Detroit in such a state of exhaustion
that they retired straight to their rooms, refusing to see anybody,
whether they were professors, or journalists, or presidents, no matter,
in fact, how distinguished they might be. There arrived on the scene a
young man with a speckled face who demanded an immediate interview with
these ladies.
‘Impossible,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to get it.’
‘Can’t help that.’
‘I _shall_ get it.’
‘You won’t.’
Pause. The speckled gentleman spat on the floor, sniffed, and then
said, ‘Well, we shall see.’
What he meant I did not even guess. But the next day there appeared
an immense interview, together with pictures of the two ladies in
question, under a head-line that informed all and sundry that ‘Dishpans
Lose Their Lure For Female Sex in England Say Prominent British Women
Educators.’
To an American reader, this must sound quite dull. Its only value,
as a story, is that, to an Englishman, it sounds almost impossible.
The ladies, rising refreshed, and eating a hearty breakfast, looked
up from over their grape-fruit to see this astounding account of the
interview which they had never given, and choked with fury.
‘How dare they?’ said one.
‘How monstrous!’ said the other. ‘Barbarism, savagery!’ they cried.
‘Not at all.’ It was imperative to soothe the ladies a little. ‘Don’t
you see that it’s really extraordinarily funny? A speckled young man
demands an interview and doesn’t get one. He therefore invents it. You
ought to feel flattered that your views are so much sought after.’
They did not feel flattered, however.
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘it is probably perfectly true that Dishpans have
Lost their Lure. Haven’t they?’
‘Dishpans have no more to do with the case than the flowers that bloom
in the spring,’ said the ladies.
* * * * *
And there, I am going to leave America. I am well aware that these few
pages represent only a very small and quite superficial fragment of a
great many exciting happenings. The truth, however, is that I was too
young to pick out what Americans call the ‘high spots.’ The rest of
this book will, I trust, be different.
CHAPTER FOUR
John Masefield, Robert Bridges, W. B. Yeats
In January, 1919, I went to Oxford. That seems about the shortest way
of relating a fact that is of singularly little interest to anybody
but myself. What _is_ of interest is that Oxford, at that time, was a
regular nest of famous singing birds gathered together in the aftermath
of the War, choosing Oxford as a sheltered resting-place, as though
their wings were a little weary and their feathers rather draggled.
W. B. Yeats had come to rest from the storms of Ireland in a quiet,
green-shuttered house in Broad Street; John Masefield was writing his
marvellous sonnets in a cottage on Boar’s Hill; Robert Bridges, the
Poet Laureate, was near by, occasionally producing a few lines of
verse which had more satire in them than poetry, to say nothing of
such young men as Aldous Huxley, Robert Nichols, and Robert Graves. I
must also pay tribute to Leslie Hore-Belisha, who is now perhaps the
most brilliant of our younger M.P’s. He did not write poetry, but his
quite unmatched eloquence at the Union will always linger as one of my
keenest intellectual (I almost said emotional) pleasures.
Of all these men, by far the greatest, to me, at least, was John
Masefield. He was the strangest blend of passion, and ethereality. He
was, moreover, the most generous of men. As soon as I went to Oxford
I decided, in company with a little band of equally impertinent young
men, that what Oxford needed was a new literary magazine which should
reflect the new spirit of the university after the War. Delicious
innocence! One really was under the impression that one was doing
something, not only terribly important, but quite new.
After endless cigarettes and a quantity of mulled claret we decided on
two things--the title and the price. It was to be called _The Oxford
Outlook_, and people were to pay half a crown for it. It is still
called _The Oxford Outlook_ to this day, which must be something of a
record for ’varsity papers. The price, however, is only a shilling.
Now came the question of contributors. Although we were properly
idealistic we were also shrewd enough to realize that unless we got
some big names, apart from those of the undergraduates, our publication
would stand little chance of creating any very great stir in the
world outside, which was what we secretly desired. Somebody therefore
suggested Masefield. And that night I sat down and wrote to Masefield,
telling him what we were doing, and asking him if he could possibly
send us a few lines for our first number.
By the next post came a most charming letter from Masefield, wishing
us all good luck, and enclosing two of the best sonnets he has ever
written--poems which any editor of any country in the world would have
been proud to publish. Here is the first of them, which has since been
included in the collected edition of his works:
ON GROWING OLD
Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying,
My dog and I are old, too old for roving;
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves. Minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart; a withered wire
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your mountains, nor your downlands, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where your young knight the broken squadron rallies,
Only stay quiet, while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.
And that he sent to somebody whose name he had never even heard,
knowing full well that we could not afford to pay for them.
A few weeks later I met Masefield himself. He had promised to read
some of his poetry to a little literary society which we had gathered
together, and we all assembled in my rooms to await his arrival. It was
a bitterly cold night, with driving snow, and he lived some eight miles
out of Oxford, in a region where there were neither taxis nor buses,
so that he would have been perfectly justified in ’phoning us to say
that he could not come. However, he turned up only a few minutes late,
having bicycled all the way, in order not to disappoint us.
One never forgets Masefield’s face. It is not the face of a young
man, for it is lined and grave. And yet it is not the face of an old
man, for youth is still in the bright eyes. Its dominant quality is
humility. There were moments when he seemed almost to abase himself
before his fellow-creatures. And this humility was echoed in
everything he did or said, in the quiet, timid tone of his voice, in
the way in which he always shrank from asserting himself.
This quality of his can best be illustrated by his behaviour that
night. When the time came for him to read his poems, he would not stand
up in any position of pre-eminence but sheltered himself behind the
sofa, in the shade of an old lamp, and from there he delivered passages
from ‘The Everlasting Mercy,’ ‘Dauber,’ ‘The Tragedy of Nan,’ and
‘Pompey the Great.’ He talked, too, melodiously, and with the ghost of
a question-mark after each of his sentences as though he were saying
‘Is this right? Who am I to lay down the law?’ And when it was all
over, and we began to discuss what he had said, all talking at the top
of our voices, very superficially, no doubt, but certainly with a great
deal of enthusiasm, it was with a sudden shock that I realized that
Masefield had retired into his shell, and was sitting on the floor,
almost in the dark, reading a volume of poems by a young and quite
unknown writer.
I saw a good deal of him after that. He lived in a little red house
looking over the hills and valleys about eight miles out, and on fine
days one could see from his window the grey spires and panes of Oxford
glittering in the distance.
‘Oxford is always different,’ he said to me once. ‘Always I see her in
a new mood of beauty from these hills.’ We were looking down on the
city from the distance and I too knew how he felt. Oxford from the
hills is a dream eternally renewed. Under the rain, when only a few
spires and towers rise above the driving sheets of grey, on an April
morning, when the whole city is sparkling and dappled with yellow
shadows, by moonlight when it is a fantastic vision of the Arabian
Nights.
Like many other literary geniuses, Masefield is clever with his hands.
He will, with equal complacency, make a model of a ship or mend a
garden gate. But since he was himself a sailor--since he has himself
known the sea in every mood of loveliness or of terror, it is only
natural that, when he does model, he should turn, by instinct, to
ships. He showed me, at his house, a most exquisite model in wood of an
old sailing vessel of the eighteenth century. There was nothing of the
dilettante about that work. Every spar, every rope, every mast, every
tiny detail was there, modelled to scale. It would have satisfied the
most ardent technician, and yet it had a grace and a poetry that only
Masefield could have given it.